What’s big, orange, spicy? Me, and…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/10/2015 (3817 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What with the stunning Liberal tide that swept over our nation on election night, this is the perfect time for Canadians to ask themselves a troubling question.

That troubling question is: what the (bad word) is up with all the pumpkin-flavoured stuff?

Seriously, unless you’ve been in a coma or hiding in a drain pipe for the past few weeks, you will know that, once again, we consumers are under siege from a soaring number of products made to taste like pumpkin.

The pumpkin-product onslaught becomes more intense every fall. In recent days, for example, I have personally taste-tested the following pumpkin-intensive items:

• Pumpkin pie liqueur — The label describes this stuff as having “fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin pie taste with layers of pumpkin spice, cinnamon and a hint of light pastry crust. Just the way Grandma used to make it.”

This would be true only if your grandma hated you. You know how sometimes you are really reluctant to try something new, but when you finally give it a go, you discover it’s actually way better than you thought possible? Well, that’s not the case with this stuff. In my view, it tastes like what you would get if you melted down a bunch of cinnamon hearts and then mixed it with bathwater after washing your dog.

• Spiced pumpkin ale — You would think mixing beer and pumpkin would be a marriage doomed to failure, but, depending on your taste buds, you would be wrong. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they came up with this brew. I imagine drinking was involved. Call me a beer geek, but it has a sort of funky, pumpkin-y, autumn-y taste. On the other hand, when I brought a bottle to my buddy Bob’s house for the Blue Jays game, he said it tasted like a pumpkin that had been buried in a sweat sock under a chicken coop on a really hot day.
• Limited-Edition Pumpkin Spice Oreos — In a word: “Yum!” Again, I am probably biased, but I strongly feel you could sandwich any flavour — including broccoli and/or brussels sprouts — between two halves of an Oreo cookie and it would taste awesome.
• Pillsbury Pumpkin Cookies and Pillsbury Limited-Edition Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls — Let’s start with the cookies, which are little ready-to-bake guys festooned with orange-and-green jack-o’-lanterns. They do not taste like pumpkins, but I can’t swear to that because I only ate about a dozen after they came out of the oven.

As for the cinnamon rolls, I currently have no journalistic insights to offer because my wife has not baked them yet, although, based on staring at the label, they give every impression of being delicious.

• Pumpkin-spice latte — Look, you don’t really need my views on this caffeinated pumpkin concoction. This traditional beverage — an even surer sign of fall than the changing leaves — is what kicked off the whole pumpkin-flavouring trend in the first place. I am going to be honest with you and confess that, yes, from time to time, I will knock one of these back at my local Starbucks.

 

It’s a little embarrassing, however, because whenever I order one, with extra foam and sprinkles, the guys in line directly behind me are usually the sort of thickly muscled macho construction types who pound back syrupy black coffee, which they stir with a rusty nail.

Anyway, I think you get today’s gourd-related point — there are even more pumpkin-spice products in stores at this time of year than there are zombies and vampires combined, if you can imagine. What I’d like to know is, who decided making everything taste like (bad word) pumpkin was a thing?

I mean, making things taste like bacon is just common sense, but pumpkin? I fear modern society must be out of its collective gourd, so to speak.

Sadly, food and drink are just the tip of the terrifying pumpkin iceberg. According to a story I just read in Cosmopolitan magazine, the latest trend in the beauty world is (pause for dramatic effect) pumpkin-spice hair, which is all the buzz on the world’s runways.

Here’s what the head colourist at a Brooklyn salon told the magazine’s website: “We’re seeing that pumpkin-spice hair has more copper undertones, whereas gingersnap tends to fall under the category of brunette with red undertones.”

I don’t wish to cause undue alarm, but clearly this pumpkin thing is getting a little out of hand. The only Halloween trend I find even more disturbing is the way grocery store shelves are being packed with millions of those miniature candy bars earlier every fall. Or is it late summer?

We always buy enough of them to feed a developing nation, even though we only get a handful of trick-or-treaters at our door. I can hear those tiny candy bars calling to me right now. “Eat us, Doug, we are tiny and probably sugar-free,” is their siren song.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a break here and give myself a shot of my favourite new seasonal product — pumpkin-spice insulin.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca