I don’t talk about the “Mandela Effect” in this column because it’s silly. People thought they had seen a movie called "Shazaam" in which Sinbad played an elf, because in a movie called "Kazaam" Shaq played an elf. People remembered Nelson Mandela's funeral before it happened because they saw the coverage of Nelson Mandela's release from prison half a year ago and remembered that. No alternative universe is needed to explain any of these.
That said, it’s easy to explain away other people ’s false memories. When it comes to my memory, things get weird. I remember things I would bet my life on, things that thousands of other people shared, but all available evidence shows they are wrong. I know Johnny Carson's co-host Ed McMahon didn't appear in Publishers Clearing House's Super Bowl commercials, but I still remember the ads and can describe the van, the house, and the... Pile of balloons. Checks that are too large. I know that in the James Bond movie Moonraker there is no shot of Joe's love interest Dory smiling at him to show that she has braces. But I remember.
There are explanations for both Moonraker and Ed McMahon, but personally it's difficult to accept them as opposed to what I remember. Still, I can't argue with the facts:
Advertisements for Publishers Clearinghouse exist, but don't star McMahon. He was a spokesman for a lesser-known rival company. So I mixed his ad with their ad.
Dolly doesn't have braces, but if you look at the scene, she clearly should . In this case, our collective memory ameliorated the mistakes of the Moonraker producers.
But there’s also the “Fruit of the Loom” logo.
The lasting, mysterious Mandela effect of the 'Fruit of the Loom' logo
Underwear purveyor Fruit of the Loom's logo once featured a cornucopia, which is as close to a universal Mandela Effect as I've ever seen. Just about everyone seems to remember this, but the company says it never happened. As this article about Snopes makes clear, there is no evidence that this alternative logo ever existed. There are photos (easily faked) and alleged trademark applications, but these all fall apart under scrutiny.
Unlike most of the Mandela Effect, there has been actual research into the Fruit of the Loom logo. Overall, this University of Chicago study suggests that people are just bad at remembering logos, but the research couldn't find any reason why people tend to remember logos incorrectly in a particular way. I suspect some of this is like Moonraker where people substituted a "better" design - the Monopoly guy was supposed to wear a monocle to fit his "old fashioned millionaire" persona - but why We're going to collectively put out a cornucopia. I don't think I've ever seen a cornucopia in real life, so when the researchers showed the study participants the "Fruit of the Loom" logo with a plate behind it, I didn't compare it to the fruit. Get in touch. , (we've all seen the connection between plates and fruit) they still largely treat cornucopias as legitimate "Fruit of the Loom" trademarks.
Underwear logo and butterfly effect
I suspect we're seeing examples of parallel universes that are identical to our own, just with different underwear company logos. I think we're seeing something closer to the butterfly effect. At some point in time something happened, perhaps something tiny, that resonated through the complex interconnected system that makes up our collective memory and managed to create a signal strong enough that most people Identify the cornucopia by associating it with the Fruit of the Loom. But no one is sure what it is. It sounds crazy, but at least one similar example found and identified the cause.
Letter Colors and Synesthesia
Research shows that about 3% of the population has synesthesia, a phenomenon in which stimuli are perceived through multiple pathways simultaneously. Synesthetes may taste mint when they hear the word "floor" or know what the color yellow sounds like. Some types of associations are more common than others, with the most commonly reported being grapheme-color synesthesia, the association of colors with letters and numbers. In 2012, MIT scientist Nathan Witthoft was studying this form of synesthesia and found that a higher-than-average number of participants grouped the same colors and numbers, and that for certain ages For people, the results are even more striking.
(Before reading any further, what color is E?)
As a single data point, there is no "that's stupid" explanation for different people connecting the same letters with the same colors. You could explain this by theorizing about a collective unconscious or undocumented connections between different senses, but there's a more mundane theory: Fisher's Magnetic Letters.
Back in the early 1970s, Fisher-Price released the first set of magnetized letters. It became very popular. E is blue, an association made by approximately 15% of participants born between 1970 and 1985. (It's a little more complicated than that, since some researchers haven't been able to make similar connections in other cultures, but for the sake of argument, that's what I'm going to do.)
So a toy released in the early 1970s determined generations' perceptions of different letter colors and helped explain aspects of synesthesia that no one had pinned down for over 40 years. I believe the same is true for Cornucopia. There was some cultural irritation that might have been completely unrelated, usually involving a cornucopia, perhaps linking it to panties, but we've collectively forgotten about it and now we're left with only the echoes.
I associate cornucopias with Thanksgiving. This seems to be the only time they become a "thing," and Thanksgiving is when Fruit of the Loom might release an ad targeting Christmas shoppers. So maybe that's where the connection comes from. Or maybe it's something else entirely.
