TikTok creators are sharing their experiences of the Fruit of the Loom, namely the lack of a cornucopia they distinctly remember being present on the logo. Despite strong convictions by passionate believers, Fruit of the Loom deny ever using a cornucopia on their branding tags. So what may be driving this collective misremembering of the Fruit of the Loom branding?
Fruit of the Loom Mandela Effect on TikTok
The Mandela Effect occurs when a large group of people seem to remember something historically that is contrary to what current evidence tells us. The term was coined in 2010 by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome “after discussing the passing of Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa. She claimed others mistakenly believed Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s. In reality, Mandela was still very much alive and didn’t pass away until 2013”, per Forbes.
In terms of Fruit of the Loom, the Mandela Effect revolves around many remembering a cornucopia being present on the branding from their youth. TikToks are emerging that suggest historical proof of the ‘horn of plenty’ on branding tags. But how can this be if Fruit of the Loom claim that they’ve never used such branding?
![Image showing TikTok users showcasing fruit of the loom with a cornucopia](https://megasplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/fruit-of-the-loom.png)
Credit: @justbri_always & @t.shades.tyler on TikTok
There’s a major tug of war happening online between the believers and the debunkers. For every piece of evidence that suggests that the cornucopia existed, there’s a rational counter-explanation for how the evidence is either false, doctored or misremembered. In any case, the conviction of the memory of the cornucopia is very real, and for many there’s no possibility that it is simply a trick of the human psyche.
Explanations online range from the rational to the whacky. Let’s explore them so that you can come to terms with the online lore thus far.
Explanation One – Changes to historical branding
The Fruit of the Loom logo has gone through minor changes throughout the years. The most noteworthy being the leaves and currants that accentuate the colourful branding. You can see that from 1962-2003, the leaves and currants are a muted brown. However, the logo was amended in 2003 through to the present, with the logo now featuring a colourful palette for all elements involved in the logo.
![Logo history of the fruit of the loom from 1962 to present day. Older versions of the logo include brown leaves that may be mistaken for a cornucopia](https://megasplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/fruit-of-the-loom-historical-branding.png)
Source: logos.fandom.com
A reasonable explanation for those who wore Fruit of the Loom T-shirts prior to 2003 is that the brain associated the muted brown accents of the logo with a cornucopia. In the long term memory it is plausible to believe that we filtered out the minor details of the logo, such as the unremarkable brown parts, only for our brain to fill in the blanks with the most reasonable explanation. A brown object associated with fruit? A cornucopia, of course.
Explanation Two – Fruit’s association with the Cornucopia
The cornucopia has been prevalent in society for millennia, traditionally used as a collecting vessel for farmers to free their hands whilst collecting fruit. The reality is that without farming and agriculture, modern society as we know it could not exist. Consequently, cultures globally are exposed to imagery of the cornucopia to some extent during their upbringings when discussing history, religion, events, and holidays. A prominent example in the Western world being Thanksgiving in the USA.
![Greek vase of Plouton with a cornucopia and Demeter with a sceptre and plough, by the Orestes Painter, 440-430 BC, ceramic, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece](https://megasplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/800px-NAMA_16346_Cornucopia-692x1024.jpg)
For our brain to misremember something, it first needs to be aware of the alternates existence. Many TikTok users explain that their only exposure to the cornucopia is from the Fruit of the Loom Logo. However, the likely explanation is many of us have simply forgotten our past exposure to the horn of plenty, leaving us to conclude that only Fruit of the Loom has exposed us to the historically significant basket.
Explanation Three – The Brains Ability To Lie To Us
To recap, we have established the cultural prevalence of the cornucopia in addition to the changes to the logo. To piece these two explanations together into a sound theory for why we misremember the Fruit of the Loom logo, we must enter the realm of psychology.
According to the fuzzy trace theory, our brains processes memories of events in two separate ways: verbatim and gist. Consider verbatim memories to be exact details of a memory. In the case of the Fruit of the Loom logo, it would be memories such as
- Apples, blueberries and apples
- Leaves and currants accenting the logo
- Red, blue, green and brown colours
Gist memories are more of a general concept of the bigger picture. For example:
- Pile of fruit
- Logo signifying abundance,
- The ‘fruit’ of the ‘loom’ being an analogy for the clothing being the produce from the loom.
So, how does this come together in misremembering the Fruit of the Loom logo? Recalling a long-term memory such as the logo from our childhood attire is easier to be recalled as a gist-memory. The gist of the logo is fetched from the brain (pile of fruit, logo signifying abundance), with the brain being susceptible to filling in the blanks.
There are many nuances to why this Mandela Effect is so prominent, including the company name. Fruit ‘Of the’ Loom primes the brain to expect more than just fruit. Many of these overlooked factors coalesce in the long-term memory, resulting in large swathes of people coming to the same false-memory.
Explanation Four – Hoaxes for Exposure
It can be tantalisingly tempting to get caught up in imagery social media displaying cornucopia’s as it seems to prove that it does indeed exist. However, it is important to remember that there are many explanations for these occurrences
- Counterfeit T-shirts using a ‘fake’ logo from Google images
- Photoshopped logo in order to make a video go viral
- Creating your own cornucopia T-shirt using a heat-press
- Users spreading fake imagery to elicit a response from Fruit of the Loom
- Users spreading fake imagery for views as a hoax
A better test would be to ask your friends and family to dig out their old fruit of the loom clothing. If you cannot find any evidence of the logo yourself, of from friends, or friends of friends, it does seem rather looming towards the existence of the cornucopia.
Did the Fruit of the Loom logo have a cornucopia on it?
Rationality explains to us in vivid precision that it’s a mistake easily made to remember the Fruit of the Loom logo having a cornucopia on it. With that being said, people’s experiences suggest otherwise. It is dubious, however, to entertain some of the alternate explanations. Examples range from a worldwide corporation coverup to multiverses changing historical events.
There is a possibility that there is something more to the phenomenon than what meets the eye, but as the term Occam’s razor explains: “If you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one.”.