FRUIT OF THE LOOM MANDELA EFFECT
I apologize for the long post in advance
I understand that most mandela effects are a product of our brain misremembering or making false memories. Such as looney tunes being remembered as looney toons because tunes sounds like toons and also reminds people of carTOONs. It just makes sense. There's a video explaining these common misconceptions HERE. If you like this kind of stuff, I recommend you watch it, because it goes over this mandela effect very well, but I’m just not satisfied with the conclusion. I’m usually a skeptic of conspiracies. It’s fun to research and speculate, but I prefer to believe rational explanations. BUT this particular mandela effect just hits different and I want to talk about it. It’s also one of the rare instances that I personally have experienced the mandela effect. I do in fact remember thinking 'huh they must have changed the logo' years back. I swear that I remember the logo looking different back in the days of elementary school. I'm just so baffled because, as the linked video explains, cornucopia (which is the swirly basket in the background) is not a very commonly depicted object. It would be difficult for our brains to add something, that we don’t even know. I’ve never actually seen a real cornucopia in real life, but that could just be me. Additionally I've read a lot of comments where people said, that as children they actually learned what a cornucopia was BECAUSE they saw it in the logo and asked their parents for an explanation.
This is an artistic rendition of the logo as some people remember it. It is fake and has never existed. Even the company itself denied it.
This is a screenshot from a 2006 animated movie ‘The Ant Bully’. I’ve never seen the film myself but this is a scene where the main character apparently shrinks and the film shows a close up on the underwear. More importantly it shows the label on it. Fruit of the loom makes underwear so that’s not surprising, what is though is that there’s a cornucopia behind the fruit. Is it an elaborate joke? Did the animators experience the mandela effect or was this particular mandela effect already known on the internet and they were just in it on the joke?
In an episode of South Park, season 16 episode 6, we can also see a cornucopia on the main character’s underwear tag. I won’t be posting a picture because it’s a bit nsfw (it shows some ass and poop so it’s a little nasty) but here’s a link to a reddit post where a user shared the screenshot of the episode.
Read this paragraph from a book called "Signs of the zodiac : a reference guide to historical, mythological, and cultural associations". It was written by Mary Ellen Snodgrass in 1997. She wrote about horn of plenty (synonym for cornucopia) as a symbol of maternity, nurturing etc. and gave some examples, one of which happens to be ‘Fruit of the Loom underwear’.
There is this news article that mentions the cornucopia ( "Florida Today" October 14th, 1994) <<(click link for full article because I cropped the picture)
My favorite ‘proof’ I want to go over is this album, titled “Flute of the Loom” by Frank Wess, an american jazz saxophonist and flutist. This album is from 1973 and the cover was illustrated by a man named Ellis Chappel. Here is a link to yet another reddit post, where the user actually contacted the illustrator. The post shows that it wasn’t Ellis who responded, but his son Reed. He claims he clearly remembers the cornucopia, just like his dad, and that it in fact was the inspiration for the cover. To me it very clearly parodies, not just the name but also the look of the Fruit of the Loom logo. Another thing I thought about was that flutes are usually straight (at least to my limited instrumental knowledge), which is even funnier when you see this particular cover where the flute is so misshapen it almost resembles more of a french horn. It is so similar in shape to a cornucopia I am actually getting the creeps. And remember this was the 70′s. No social media, no quick access to google etc. There was no way to just stumble upon mandela effects on reddit, insta, tumblr and consequently create false memories. Wherever the illustrator came up with the idea that Fruit of the Loom had a cornucopia, it surely wasn’t the internet.
Ok so now that I have gone over the parodies and the written references, I am left with only one picture in my ‘conspiracy theory’ folder, and it is this one. This crappy, low resolution image from 4chan (allegedly). I am not a 4chan user and couldn’t for the life of me find the source of this image, so if anyone out there has the original post: share it, reblog, message me whatever. Could this be a knock off tshirt? It doesn’t make much sense since the brand is known for producing cheap affordable clothing while imitations typically happen with designer brands. Why would someone make a knock off of a product which originally costs like 5 €?? The shirt also looks old and the logo appears washed out and faded. On the other hand, Fruit of the Loom always produced a label with a colorful logo, they never stamped it onto fabric.
In conclusion, I’m not sure what to think and feel about this mandela effect. I gathered a lot of material which works in favor of the cornucopia’s existence. However the company itself denies it’s existence. The logo had brown leaves instead of green at one point, which could explain the confusion, but it doesn’t explain the clear cornucopia shape on Flute of the Loom album cover. Can you tell I spent way too much time on this
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
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