NEW YORK, -- Americans are going out of the gourds for pumpkin spice.
Data from Nielsen reveals Americans spend about half a billion dollars on pumpkin spice products every year.
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From the popularity of Starbucks' pumpkin spice lattes to the annual introduction of new pumpkin-related products, like Hefty's sold-out pumpkin-scented trash bags.
Starbucks alone reportedly sells 20 million pumpkin spice lattes annually.
According to the coffee giant, the highly-favored pumpkin-flavored beverage earned the company its best sales week of all time when the drink was reintroduced to fans on August 30.
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"There's no practical reason to put pumpkin in your cup of coffee, to put it on your front stoop, to sweeten it and put it in your pie," said Cindy Ott, a historian, college professor, and the author of 'Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon.' "But those modern-day traditions actually date back to much older traditions of associating the pumpkin with a small family farm. The idyllic kind of small family farm in American life."
The brightly-colored crop seems to hold a special place in the hearts, minds, and wallets of Americans.