In recent years, we’ve seen the rising popularity of pumpkin spice everything. Starbucks may’ve started it all with the iconic Pumpkin Spice Latte but the trend has grown almost exponentially since then. We decided to try a few pumpkin spice flavored foods and see if the trend is really worth the hype.

We started with the pumpkin spice Poptart and it was the closest thing to pumpkin spice that we tried. The taste is reminiscent of a store bought pumpkin pie all wrapped up in the signature Poptart foil package. All in all, it doesn’t really showcase the wonders of pumpkin spice, it just seems like another outlandish Poptart flavor similar to rootbeer and orange crush.

When we moved on to the pumpkin spice donut, we really saw the problems that the pumpkin spice phenomenon is causing. The smell is is reminiscent of a candle you use to cover up the smell of the garbage that you haven’t taken out in a week. Even worse than that, the most off-putting thing about the donut is the color. When you break it open, it is bright orange. Now that would make sense if it actually tasted like pumpkin because you would know that real pumpkin was used in it. However, that is not the case at all. When you finally take a bite out of it, the donut tastes like someone has sprayed Febreeze in your mouth and that is not a sensation anyone should ever have to experience.

The Pumpkin Spice Triscuit tasted more like sweet and salty kettle corn than pumpkin spice. That being said, the kettle corn flavor was very subtle and it was more like eating a piece of cardboard. To add to the weird taste, the bland, square cracker resembled a carpet sample that you get when you’re trying to redo the floors in your house.

The biggest problem with the pumpkin spice trend is that half of the food that claims to be flavored with pumpkin spice doesn’t even taste remotely like pumpkin. It’s a good marketing technique to raise sales but the flavor is rarely done right so it’s useless. It’s all just bait to get consumers to waste their money. Anyone who says that a pumpkin spice Triscuit actually tastes like pumpkin spice has been tricked by commercial advertising. Pumpkin spice has taken over the country and maybe even the world and we’re not here for it.