If you’ve had your fill of pumpkin spice, the people at Hefty are ready to help you out.
There must’ve been some time in history when we didn’t know anything about pumpkin spice.
It just doesn’t feel that way.
As autumn leaves tumble, the presence of pumpkin spice in our lives takes off.
The fact that the chatter starts in August and builds exponentially might turn some people off to the aromatic blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and sometimes allspice.
No matter. The pumpkin spice juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down.
How Did We Get Here?
People have enjoyed nutmeg for thousands of years and pumpkin pie spice has been mentioned in cookbooks dating to the 1890s, with a “pompkin” recipe going as far back as 1796.
McCormick (MKC) – Get McCormick & Company Incorporated Report introduced blended pumpkin spice commercially in 1934 and a whole slew of companies followed suit.
Starbucks introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte In 2003 and has sold over 600 million cups since then.
Foot traffic to the coffee selling giant soared by 25.7% a week after the coffee giant introduced its fall menu on August 30, according to a recent Placer.ai study,
The menu is pumpkin-heavy featuring not just the seasonal treat but also Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew, a pumpkin cream cheese muffin and a cake pop that looks like a little owl.
Dunkin (DNKN) – Get Dunkin’ Brands Group, Inc. Report, meanwhile, launched a fall menu with Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew, Nutty Pumpkin Coffee and pumpkin-flavored donuts and donut holes on August 17.
Warm and Fuzzy
There have been reports of 65 different foods that contain pumpkin spice, but that feels like awfully low number.
There’s pumpkin spice tea, pumpkin spice Cheerios, pumpkin spice doggie treats, pumpkin spice pretzels and pumpkin spice yogurt.
All this pumpkin talk might be enough to drive some people out of their gourds, but Hefty its getting a slice of the pumpkin pie — and just in time for National Pumpkin Spice Day, which is really a thing and it’s happening on Oct. 1.
Hefty, a division of Reynolds Consumer Products, is trashing pumpkin spice quite literally by introducing its limited-edition Cinnamon Pumpkin Spice Ultra Strong Trash Bags.
“Year after year, people return to the scent of pumpkin spice to evoke all the warm and fuzzy fall feelings,” Hefty said in a statement. “With lattes, treats, and candles galore, it might seem that there is no place else for the fall scent to show up. Challenge accepted.”
Consumers can now visit HeftyPumpkinSpice.com to purchase their own limited-edition trash bags.
Upgrading the Garbage
“Now, fall lovers can keep their pumpkin spice obsession going strong this National Pumpkin Spice Day and beyond by giving their garbage the cozy fall upgrade they never knew they needed,” Hefty said.
Ethan Frisch, a spice expert and owner of sustainable spice trading company Burlap and Barrel, was not impressed.
“The trash is exactly where those fake pumpkin spice chemical scents and flavors belong!” he declared. “If you really need your garbage to smell like pumpkin spice, I’d recommend simply tossing out some of your old, stale spices and taking the opportunity to replace them with something better and fresher.”
The people at Manischewitz were bringing on the snark as the kosher food products company tweeted a photo of its pumpkin spice gefilte fish–yeah, really–and asked “page from our playbook?”
And then there was the person who tweeted a video clip of talk show host Conan O’Brien silently screaming the question “Whyyy”?
Hefty did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but GIF Conan does raise an interesting question: What’s the deal with pumpkin spice?
Yes, But Why?
Why is a sizable portion of the population and just about every retailer on earth obsessed with this stuff?
“Part of the joy from these items comes from the fact that they aren’t available two-thirds of the year,” Jadrian Wooten, a collegiate associate professor of economics at Virginia Tech, said in an interview.
Wooten said that the “first taste brings back positive memories for people, but eventually that nostalgia wears off.”
“The second drink may still be really good, but it’s usually not as good as the first one,” he said. “The same phenomenon happens with the third drink, fourth drink, and so on. By the time we have our twentieth pumpkin spice latte of the year, it’s time to start thinking about switching to peppermint mochas.”
Jason Fischer, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview last year that “pumpkin spice aromas emerge in the fall in shops and cafes, coinciding with the arrival of colorful leaves, family gatherings, and back-to-school bustle.”
“The association that the smell has with the season in our memories allows it to powerfully evoke the refreshing feelings of fall,” he said. “We often long for the arrival of fall at the end of a hot summer, and our sense of smell can summon up the season early.”
