These are a little strange, while I don't hate them, they represent everything I don't understand about the popularity of pumpkin spice stuff. Right off the bat I'm going to clear up one thing, nowhere on this package does it say "pumpkin spice". This is kind of the reason that my lack of understanding about the pumpkin spice phenomenon came to be.

The thing about pumpkin spice that I don't get is the fact that there's often no pumpkin involved at all. Most of the pumpkin spiced things that I've had contain the spices that are often used to spice a pumpkin pie. I'm pretty sure there's some nutmeg and cinnamon involved. I can accept that, however the name (and often colour) of many of the products seems to imply that there would be some kind of pumpkin flavour as well. Don't get me wrong, I like the spices often used in pumpkin pie, and I do believe that they work in other things as well, it's just the liberal use of the word "pumpkin" that disappoints me.

This is where these fit into the equation. It does not say "pumpkin spice" anywhere on this package, it says "pumpkin pie". This tells me that these should taste like somewhat like pumpkin, as well as the spices used to flavour pumpkin pie, but they don't. These are white chocolate M&M's with pumpkin spice in them. The creaminess of the white chocolate kind of makes these M&Ms taste like a pumpkin spice milkshake. Over all I would say that they taste OK, but not fantastic. I enjoyed them fairly well, but I'm not going to be hunting them down to keep a reserve until they're back next year. This was a fine experiment and I'm happy I tried them.

These are pumpkin spice, not pumpkin. I'd like to see more pumpkin pie treats out there, with a pumpkin being the dominant flavour. I doubt this will happen, so I'll just have to live the rest of my life being slightly confused by the pumpkin spice thing. I think this trend is going to be here a while, and I think it might even be more than a trend at this point.