LONDON, UK – Starbucks, the worlds most recognisable coffee and stifling cultural homogeny chain, today unveiled to a jaded world it’s new ‘Halloween Cups’. The novelty containers launched simultaneously in all 21,366 chillingly identical stores worldwide leaving customers beaming with apathy at their pots of lukewarm stimulant that were now adorned with cartoon images of ghosts, scarecrows and pumpkins.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz addressed reporters outside the companies original Seattle Headquarters earlier today via a video link from their Official Economic Headquarters in Switzerland where he must remain for at least 6 months of the year for ‘family reasons’.

“Everyone knows that Halloween is just around the corner when Starbucks Halloween cups start appearing” he said with no apparent irony. “Coffee has been an integral part of Halloween for many years. Did you know the phrase ‘trick or treat’ is just a shortening of the traditional, seasonal Dutch greeting at this time of year ‘trick or treat or coffee’? It’s a special time of year that generates not just a lot of great memories for coffee lovers across the world but great revenues too. We at Starbucks are proud to play such an important part in getting people into the holiday spirit. It can get pretty chilly in those costumes when you are out going door to door in the hope a generous neighbour will put some 100% arabica beans in your sack or looking at all the scary faces carved into coffee beans on people’s porches. So from everyone at Starbucks, remember to wrap up warm. If you really want to keep the cold at bay though and stay awake, maybe think about grabbing one of our special pumpkin, walnut and cinnamon ‘Spookycinnos’. They’re frighteningly good!”

Although the world’s anthropologists disagree on the millenia-old origins of the festival of Halloween, some equating it with the Roman Feast of Pomona, others seeing it’s roots in the pagan harvest festivals of the Celtic people’s of Northern Europe, all of them agree it has never had anything to do with coffee. Ever.

“Coffee as a drink drunk by humans has a rich history of its own” noted Professor Gillespie from Peterborough University’s Beverage Department “but it is a history that only really starts in the 15th century, a good two and half thousand years after festivals akin to Halloween began. Coupled to the fact that the history of coffee is tightly bound with the history of Sufi Islam and the rise of the likes of the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Caliphate…I often wonder why companies like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts don’t do more to highlight the rich, almost exclusively Muslim heritage of what they sell…”

Whatever the motivations behind the gratingly infantile marketing campaign, Starbucks show no signs of stopping their invasion of every corner of Western culture. Undercover photos taken at one of their packaging warehouses in Amsterdam showed millions upon millions of ‘Eggciting Easter Countdown’ cups ready to be shipped replete with ‘hand drawn’ cartoon rabbits, festive eggs and crucified Messiahs. Coupled with the rumours of an imminent ‘Movember Mocha’ it seems nothing, even testicular cancer, is immune from being blithely included in Starbuck’s Global Strategy. Except of course, the actual history of the drink they sell.

For now, consumers seem willing to wearily accept the new cups so long as their coffees help them at least get through the morning. At the time of press the next generation of human beings could be seen accepting this as a thing because they never knew the world to be any other way.