On the near eve of Halloween — in the midst of the fall season — we are swept up by pumpkins: pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins and pumpkin soup. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on. Caught up in the craze to make everything pumpkin flavored, many seem to forget that not everything should be pumpkin flavored. Here are five examples that take delicious foods and turn them into pumpkin nightmares.

1. Honey Roasted Pumpkin Ravioli: With a lack of sauce, this ravioli blends together cheeses with pumpkin mush and sugars to try to sweeten the ravioli into a pumpkin flavor people have come to love. This ravioli fails on almost all accounts. The pumpkin gives it a weird texture and the mozzarella cheese clashes with the attempt at the pumpkin flavor. Overall, the ravioli would be better off sticking to the traditional Italian cuisine.
2. Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows: I am a big marshmallow fan. To me, eating 10-20 marshmallows during a campfire is a tradition. When I saw these pumpkin flavored marshmallows at Wal-Mart, I was cautiously optimistic on how they would taste. I do believe there is a certain pumpkin flavor that most pumpkin foods aim try to achieve when calibrating their flavor. These marshmallows miss the mark though. Even if they did get the taste right, the texture of the marshmallow combined with any pumpkin flavor comes off as strange and off-putting.
3. Pringles Potato Crisps Pumpkin Spice Flavor: There isn’t much that needs to be said about this one.
4. Hershey’s Kisses Pumpkin Spice Flavored: Remember how I said there is that pumpkin flavor foods strive for? These Hershey Kisses hit that mark and take it a step or two further. It almost tastes too strong with pumpkin. There is great potential in this candy. The chocolate in it has a nice consistency and might have gone well with the pumpkin if the pumpkin didn’t overpower the chocolate. It was too sweet with a pumpkin flavor that made the candy seem fake.
5. Pumpkin Spice Peanut Butter: This peanut butter spread falls victim to trying to taste too much like pumpkin when in reality, it doesn’t. With cookie butter, peanut butter and Nutella all being heavier spreads of different flavors, it didn’t seem out of question for pumpkin spice peanut butter to taste alright. Unfortunately, the pumpkin does not go well with the peanut butter and it ends up tasting like a gross peanut butter with an even worse aftertaste.