Kotas Reviews Zone Perfect Pumpkin Spice Bars

They say that breakfast is the most important part of the day. My question is "who are they, and why do they promote breakfast with such single minded efficiency?" But we're not here to talk about that. Nope, the yearly Pumpkin Spice blight is upon us and all that entails. We've touched upon it many times on this blog, and today will shall do so again. Ladies and gentlemen, let's take a good old fashioned gander at Zone Perfect Pumpkin Spice Bars.

Now with flavor!

Zone Perfect has been a staple in my pantry for a number of years. They tend to be relatively inexpensive (for a meal replacement bar), go on sale regularly, and have a handful of decent to good flavors (though nothing particularly outstanding). So of course they had to come out with a Pumpkin Spice flavor, because if you have a lot of flavors, almost no one can resist the urge to give this one a go. The box art is okay. I like the little leaf designs, but the picture of the actual product below is highly uninspiring. Also, it cleaves to the tradition of "pumpkin spice" being represented by cinnamon and brown sugar on box art. Whatever, let's rip it open.

Looks like someone got really excited by the prospect of pumpkin spice.

Well, it looks pretty unappetizing, mostly resembling a granola bar that an overenthusiastic child glopped over with icing. It's not very attractive to the eye, is what I'm saying. Still, most people don't give three turkeys about the look, but want to know more about the flavor. Good thing I'm here to sum up: It's alright. It's not awful, but it doesn't really taste like pumpkin anything. It mostly tastes like a granola bar covered in stale icing. Why stale? It has this weird waxy...essence that makes it taste not good at all. It's tolerable, and I will finish the box, but I would never eat these again.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets a single Frowny Face. It's not good, but it isn't poison or pointless. It's just not well done. If you take all your flavor queues from competitors with shitty flavorings, your flavorings will taste bad too. Give these a hard pass. I don't care how into pumpkin spice you are. I think I can safely say at this point that Starbucks got it right, and everyone else has utterly failed to recapture that magic. Let's maybe move on to other things, okay?