24 Pumpkin Spice Things We Really Don’t Need This Fall

Peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and bacon, peanut butter and bananas… There are plenty of good things to do with peanut butter. Turning it from a classic spread into yet another example of pumpkin spice overkill is probably not one of them. Peanut Butter & Co.’s version of this unnecessary portmanteau creation combines pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, salt, and cane sugar with, presumably, some peanuts in there somewhere.

Culture clash alert: Pumpkin pie is a Yankee dish, typically sweet, mild, and creamy. Salsa, a well-loved condiment — it overtook ketchup in sales in the U.S. a quarter century ago — of Hispanic origins, is typically salty, spicy, and chunky. Introducing one to the other is either a gastronomic innovation of startling brilliance or, um, indigestible silliness.

Lester’s Fixins soda, a house brand of the 85-location Rocket Fizz Soda Pop & Candy Shop chain, comes in a number of quirky flavors — among them Buffalo wing, mustard, and ranch dressing — so it’s not surprising the chain wanted to join the pumpkin spice club. Though the company calls its soda Pumpkin Pie Soda, no actual pumpkin is involved — just “natural and artificial flavors,” presumably including cinnamon and the rest. Cheers.

This iconic, often ridiculed “pork with ham” meat product exists in more than 15 varieties, one of which is a seasonal offering flavored with you-know-what. “Hints of cinnamon, clove, allspice and nutmeg give this new, limited edition variety a subtle sweetness,” announces the Spam website. Since the second ingredient listed on the label after the meat is sugar, “subtle sweetness” might not be the right term.

Nothing says “pumpkin pie” more vividly than a mixture of wheat and barley grass, alfalfa, spinach, broccoli, pineapple, carrots, cherries, açaí, beets, raspberries, and peppermint — right? This Amazing Grass product is not a protein powder, but rather a so-called “superfood” in powder form. It’s full, says the company website, of vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients, digestive enzymes, and probiotics, with that added touch of cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, exactly the flavors a mélange like this is crying out for. Isn’t it?