Scary spice.
Fall’s hottest flavor goes way beyond coffee. There are pumpkin spice Pringles, pumpkin spice M&M’s, pumpkin spice sausage, pumpkin spice pretzels, and even pumpkin spice protein powder, and they are taking over grocery store aisles.
“Pumpkins have been around forever,” says Julie Hennessy, professor of marketing at Northwestern University. “They are symbols of fall and are somewhat of an American icon.”
Hennessy also says that the introduction of pumpkin spice to the marketplace caused consumers who originally disliked the taste of pumpkin to give it a try, and they ended up liking it. In the last year, pumpkin spice products have raked in over $361 million.
The rise of pumpkin spice can be greatly attributed to Starbucks’ wildly popular pumpkin spice latte. First sold in 2003, the company has sold over 200 million of them worldwide.
“Nobody knew back then what it would grow to be. The pumpkin spice latte has taken on a life of it own,” says a Starbucks spokesperson. Also, the pumpkin spice latte has recently come to the social media world. The drink’s official twitter account is tweeting to over 120,000 followers.
The pumpkin spice mania has captured student’s attention as well. “It’s okay, but a little too sweet and I feel very basic whenever eat or drink it,” says Doran Kim, junior.
Just walking through a grocery store, you can find a plethora of pumpkin spice flavored foods, hair products and even cat litter, and people who say they don’t like pumpkin are buying them just because of the association of autumn that comes with the products. Most products don’t even have pumpkins printed on the packaging.
Sales of pumpkin spice have gone through the roof. However, sales of real pumpkins have dropped by $9 million since 2011. This is because most pumpkin spice foods have no actual pumpkin in them, instead there are about 340 chemical compounds that give the products their flavor.
There are a lot of critics of America’s pumpkin spice obsession, but the numbers don’t lie. Whether it’s in your coffee or in your candle, the reign of pumpkin spice as fall’s official flavor doesn’t seem to ending any time soon.