And now comes the annual onslaught of holiday flavors. Some examples:

Coffee-mate nondairy coffee creamer returns four “limited-time” flavors from last year – Gingerbread, Eggnog, Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Mocha – each of which sounds fine until you add the word “coffee.”

Nestle is adding three “limited edition” versions of its double-flavor Swirled chocolate chips. The original flavors (introduced 1½ years ago – time flies while you’re eating chocolate) are milk chocolate-caramel, milk chocolate-peanut butter and semisweet chocolate-white chocolate. The new ones are semisweet chocolate-mint, dark chocolate-raspberry, and just white chocolate (but in swirled colors; some red and white, some green and white).

Nor is holiday joy lacking in the special-diets aisle. Vitasoy lactose-free soy drink has Peppermint Chocolate (marked “Winter Warmth”) and Holly Nog (“Season’s Greetings”).

In the amusingly peculiar aisle, LesserEvil Brand Snacks, which makes many flavors of kettle corn (found at Whole Foods and many Lunds and Byerly’s), is launching a Holiday Kettle Corn Collection, three 10-ounce bags of kettle corn: Gingerbread, Peppermint and CocoaCoal. But you can get the holiday collection only online, at www.lesserevil.com (it’s $25 plus about $6 shipping).

And Kettle brand potato chips is firing up its third annual People’s Choice campaign, to choose the next Kettle flavor from among five – Royal Indian Curry, Five-Spice, Chili Lime, Aztec Chocolate and Island Jerk – that are distinctly not holiday oriented. But it’s promoting the Party Pack of all five 5-ounce bags (also including a world-music CD) as a holiday gift. It’s available only at www.passporttoflavor.com for $19.95, including postage.