Pumpkin spice is everywhere for Halloween
Trick or treat! While youngsters dress up as ghosts and goblins and go door to door for Halloween, grown-ups across the United States are indulging in all things pumpkin spice.
What started a decade ago as a seasonal Starbucks coffee flavor - which curiously isn't made of pumpkin - has blossomed into something of an autumn obsession.
Supermarket shelves are bursting with pumpkin spice cookies, chocolates, marshmallows, waffles, bagels, pasta, potato chips, Greek yogurt, hummus, granola and pudding, to name but a few.
Trader Joe's, a hip grocery chain, features "pumpkin-spiced pumpkin seeds" on it's as-long-as-your-arm list of edible Halloween offerings.
Brewers are tapping into a growing market for limited-edition pumpkin-flavored beer.
Bartenders mix pumpkin spice cocktails that might go nicely with a pumpkin spice e-cigarette.
"Now, everything from your morning coffee to salad has some type of pumpkin flavoring," Samantha Bakall of the Oregonian newspaper in Portland, Oregon, wrote.
In a bit of investigative lifestyle journalism, Bakall set out to sample every pumpkin-flavored product she could find.
She stopped after 26 items, leaving 17 untested.
"I've heard of realtors using pumpkin spice candles as a way to make prospective buyers feel more at home," said Karen Mishra, a marketing professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Mercifully, no one - at least, not yet - is marketing pumpkin spice tampons, after a convincing Photoshop image of a spoof pumpkin-scented Tampax box went viral online.
Dollars for pumpkins
Halloween is big business, with US consumers expected to drop $7.4 billion this year on costumes, decorations, candy and more, the National Retail Federation has said.
Some of those greenbacks will be spent on real pumpkins.
Last year US farmers grew 1.13 billion pumpkins, the Department of Agriculture says. Many, if not most, became jack-o'-lanterns, lit on Oct 31, then dumped in the trash the next day.
In the US, pumpkins are loaded with symbolism, even if they've never been a dietary mainstay, said Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon.
As more and more people moved into cities, the pumpkin came to be associated with the romance of nature and the virtues of country life, the St Louis University professor said.
"It's the meaning that people are celebrating," she said. "There's no practical reason to put pumpkin spice in a cup of coffee or to put a pumpkin on your front stoop."
Andrea Riberi, senior vice-president for consumer insights at market research firm Nielsen, said it remains to be seen if the "infiltration" of pumpkin-flavored products is more than a passing fad.
(China Daily 11/01/2014 page10)
