As I grew to adulthood, I eventually realized that there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or pumpkin spice. And yet that doesn't stop all three of them from appearing like clockwork each year!
Usually the onslaught of pumpkin spice-flavored everything doesn't begin until late October or early November, so I was surprised to see these on the shelf in mid-August. I wasn't surprised to see that these cupcakes contain no cinnamon, cloves, ginger, or nutmeg (aka "pumpkin spice"), because I expected they consisted mostly of artificial flavors. But I was surprised to note the following small print on the back of the box: "Partially produced with genetic engineering". Frankly, if you are eating Hostess cup cakes, you are probably not going to be concerned, but it did make me scratch my head. But I digress...
These cupcakes taste somewhat like a spice cake mix, but not quite. There is a slight hint of sweetness to them...possibly orange?...but they don't taste anything like the pumpkin pie pictured on the box. Hostess missed a good opportunity to change the frosting, though. These would have been perfect with cream cheese-flavored frosting, but alas they appear to be a more generic vanilla.
The bottom line is that fans of spice cake and pumpkin spice will enjoy them, but in a couple of months you'll instead be able to pick up a cream cheese frosted spice cupcake along with your latte, so you might as well wait. Good, but not great.
RATING: 3/5
