What the heck is up with pumpkin spice's meteoric rise to fame? Where did it all begin…and where will pumpkin spice flavored EVERYTHING end?
So, like everyone else, I totally agree that pumpkin spice flavored desserts (and other things, within reason) taste amazing! But I have some hilarious examples for you of the pumpkin spice trend being taken a little too far and used in truly bizarre ways!!
I'll go ahead and put what I think of as the best example first: pumpkin spice Greenies!
I mean, as we all know, dogs don't eat veggies anyway! They don't even like pumpkin! So now I guess we're forcing our pumpkin spice habit on our dogs, when they'd much rather have pepperoni bites or something…
Pumpkin spice scented perfume and cologne is a real thing, too! Just search that on Amazon and you'll come up with all sorts of results!
You might be wondering, "When did everyone FALL head over heels for pumpkin spice flavored everything??" (Or maybe you never even gave it a second thought.)
Well, as you may already know, it all started with the Starbucks pumpkin spice latte…
But the Starbucks PSL has been around since 2003, and the pumpkin spice trend has only really been around for the past, say, 6 or 7 years, right?
So what happened 6 or 7 years ago that made pumpkin spice officially a household name? Well, in fall 2012, Starbucks was smart enough to start using the Twitter hashtag #PSL, at a time when Starbucks itself was exploding in popularity.
But Peter Dukes, the food expert who was in charge of creating the pumpkin spice latte in the lab, attributes its popularity to:
(1) The uniqueness of the drink. Chocolate and caramel are super yummy…but pumpkin is more interesting to us, especially since it's only around for a limited time!!
(2) How we associate the fall season with warmth, family, nostalgia…it seems like a little bit of a stretch to me that the pumpkin spice latte really captures our feelings in this way, but maybe fall spirit is REALLY what drives is to buy these sweet confections. It's not so much about the sweet taste of the PSL as it is about the fact that it signals to us, "Fall is here and so everything is perfect."
But is it blasphemy for me to say we've gone too far? Not only do we have pumpkin spice dog treats and perfumes, but everything has gotten so out of hand that there's also been some funny hoaxes:
Somebody photoshopped "pumpkin spice" onto a package of Charmin toilet paper!
And even though it's totally fake, it's not too far off from the crazy ways we've seen pumpkin spice actually used, right?
This photoshop hoax is even more disgusting, if that's possible:
Or at least I think it sounds disgusting. Maybe the most die-hard pumpkin spice fans would think that this sounds like a nice little addition to the rest of a Thanksgiving feast!!
I think we can all agree, though, that as amazing as pumpkin spice is, there's no reason for us to be giving it to our dogs or putting it on our toilet paper.
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