I was at the grocery store the other day to buy some chili and, for all you know, Hawaiian Punch for some reason. I saw this stacked on one of the shelves:

Yes, I shop at Wal-Mart sometimes. And I am not ashamed!

But that’s not the point. The point is everyone’s selling pumpkin spice stuff now. You could probably walk up to a three-card monte dealer and he’d tell you to find the queen, you know, the queen of pumpkins (which, apparently, is a type of thing).

Listen, I’m not going to say that I’m better than pumpkin spice. I once bought a pumpkin spice latte, but it sure wasn’t at Starbucks.

A couple of years ago, I had wandered into a 7-Eleven at 3 a.m. and started, like most men do, poking around for something to drink. I wasn’t drunk, mind you, I was filling in for the morning show producer on one of our stations. Maybe, though, the thought of leading our news coverage that morning made me drunk with power, prompting the idea, “Pumpkin spice latte? Why not?! Anything goes today!”

It was okay. Just okay. It didn’t make me want to eat pumpkin all autumn long, though. It also didn’t make me buy lattes at 7-Eleven every morning. Now that I work the morning shift every day, though, I do go into 7-Eleven frequently. Usually, and I am not ashamed about this either, I come out with a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Back to the point: I feel like once Wal-Mart starts getting involved, the trend is no longer trendy.

So we need to start looking for the next Big Thing for Fall trends. Crop circles? It’s been done.

How about scythes? Like, an artisan scythe?

I just looked up scythes on Ace Hardware’s website and got zero matches. You’re welcome, scythe industry, for an idea that’ll generate a spike in sales.

At the same time, though, Big Scythe, you can’t just assume you’ll sit back and watch the money roll in. With the popularity of artisan scythes, you’ll see mom and pop scythe outfits opening up all over the place.

Any individual scythe outfit won’t put you out of business, but a backlash against corporate scythe-ery could be on the horizon.

I mean, look at Starbucks itself. Sure, it’s a behemoth in the unreasonably expensive coffee industry, but  it may have actually helped mom and pop coffee houses.

Even Starbucks is the mom and pop compared to Wal-Mart, though. I imagine Clovis Starbuck (which I assume is the name of the founder of Starbucks) reading this blog and furrowing his brow. He puts his hand on his head and stammers into the living room where his wife, Mavis, is sitting and says that he feels faint because Wal-Mart dared copy him.

Maybe I’m a fool, though. Look at Easter: all these years, we’ve had Paas, where you stick an egg in a cup of water to mix with goo. Every so often, a new company comes up with a plan to put, like, a clear crayon in the box or help you dye the egg several colors. Do you know who the leader is? According to Paas’ website, which I’m sure wouldn’t exaggerate something like this, it’s still Paas.

Maybe, then, the right move is to come up with the clear crayon of the pumpkin spice craze and then sell it to Wal-Mart for millions.