If you search on the internet, the Fruit of the Loom logo will display an American underwear and clothing manufacturing brand. This brand is no ordinary one. It has been in the market for 20 decades.
Since its making in 1851, its logo has roused multiple controversies. The logo contains green leaves, cassava, red apples, purple grapes, and green apples.
The controversy we’re talking about here is the existence of a cornucopia in the logo, which never existed.
The brand itself had made an official claim on its website that the logo did not have any horn and never had it throughout its establishment. However, many people still claim that there was one.
Let’s find out if there ever was a horn in the logo, was it a Mandela effect, or just a marketing fluke.
History of the Brand’s Logo
The Fruit of the Loom brand has been around for more than two hundred years, acquiring one of the oldest trademarks in the USA’s history. It gained recognition for selling top-quality underwear to customers in the U.S.
However, the brand rose to fame throughout the world and is still one of the most renowned brands worldwide.
How Did the Fruit of the Loom Form?
Like the ambitious Wright brothers (who made an airplane for the first time), the Fruit of the Loom was created by two brothers named Benjamin and Robert Knight in 1851. They bought a mill in the Rhode Island state (in Warwick).
The mill was named B.B. & R. Knight Corporation, which started designing premium quality cotton cloth and sold it to the textile manufacturers found within their state.
After 19 years of cotton cloth manufacturing, the brothers decided to name their business and got it registered under the “Fruit of the Loom.”
As mentioned before, the brand has one of the oldest trademarks in the history of America, with the number 418 it received after business registration.
Where Did the Inspiration for This Name Come From?
The current name of the brand came from a visit of the brothers to one of their customers, Rufus Skeel. Since the Knight brothers sold their cotton cloth to customers, they could mold the pieces according to their desires before reselling them.
Rufus Skeel himself was a cloth manufacturer. During the Knight brothers’ visit to the Skeel factory, Robert finds out that Skeel’s daughter (Jessica) used to paint fruits on some of the bolts of the cloths.
According to Skeel, this new addition helped the cloth look more attractive and sold quicker than the rest. Soon after that, the Knight brothers added fruits to their trademark and named it the Fruit of the Loom.
You must be wondering what a loom is? It is referred to as an old machine that makes a cloth. Since the Knight brothers made cloth, the addition seems great. The Fruit means the fabric or the product that the Loom made.
So, Did the Logo Have a Horn?
To understand this better, we will have to dive deeper into the logos that ever came into sight of this brand. Below are the logo variations seen overtime of the Fruit of the Loom:
In 1893:
1893 marked the release of the Knight brothers company’s first logo. The logo was so detailed that it looked like an intricate painting of fruits. The logo contained:
- A red apple
- Light berries
- Green grapes
- Blue grapes
If you focus on the logo’s background, you will find multiple shades of blue with a hint of white, representing the cloudy sky.
In 1927:
In 1927, the logo faced a change, and the rectangular frame was altered to an oval or ellipse one. Another noticeable change was the redrawn fruits.
However, the position of each Fruit remained the same with the same colors. Moreover, the previous logo had a banner around the name. But this logo just had the name written on the cloudy sky without any banners.
In 1936:
This third logo variation is unlike the first two. The first two were clear pictures of the fruits in the logo, but this one looks more like a seal or stamp.
This circular, coin-like logo variation had a dark brown (bronze) background, while the fruits lost color but had a 3D shape.
In 1951:
Fifteen years later, it was time for another logo variation. This time, the dark, dull bronze background got lighter and was more gold-colored but still circular.
The color of the fruits was back again. It looked just like its previous variation with more pronounced colors and texture.
In 1962:
Again, eleven years later, the company decided to renew the logo. This time, the circular shape was replaced by an oval.
The brand’s name found its place in the middle of the logo instead of being on the top. The name also got a little larger for better visibility and readability.
In 1978:
The change showed a smaller oval containing fruits without their white highlights. The name of the brand had consistent typography, making it more legible for people to read.
From 2003 till now:
Perhaps the best logo variation is the current one. This variation has no oval ellipse encompassing the name and fruits.
The fruits have been redrawn and grown in size but so has the name. It has an attractive, colorful display that is much easier to read and aesthetically pleasing.
Now comes the most important part… did you see any horn in these logo variations? No! Exactly! There was no cornucopia in the logo in the first place. So, does that mean the hundreds of people on the internet were lying about seeing a cornucopia (a brown horn) in the logo?
Well, that’s where the Mandela effect comes into play.
What is the Mandela Effect?
The Mandela effect defines a situation where a large group of people believes in the occurrence of an event when in reality, it did not happen. The Fruit of the Loom is a prime example of this effect.
Where Did This Concept Come From?
This term, the Mandela Effect, was established by Fiona Broome in 2009. She decided to document and release her detailed observations of this phenomenon on her website.
Fiona Broome was once in a conference with other people where she expressed her grave sadness on the ex-South African president Nelson Mandela’s death during his prison time.
This happened in the 1980s, but the caveat is that Nelson Mandela didn’t die in prison in the 1980s. Instead, he died in 2013.
Broome talked about her memory with other people and soon found that this was a common occurrence.
Other people also believed this and remembered news airing about Nelson Mandela’s death in the prison and vivid speech given by his widow.
This shocked Broome because people remembered a false story in great detail without any evidence backing it up. So, she decided to research it more in detail.
Why Does This Happen?
It’s common for our brains to accept what’s right or wrong based on others’ perceptions or how our memory plays its role. Here’s the most common explanation of why this happens:
1. False Memories
Our brain has the power to form false memories. When one recalls a memory, our brain influences it enough to make it incorrect instead of recalling it perfectly.
This means the memory we had is now an unreliable source of information. False memories are common and frequently happen to almost everyone, from trivial to significant ones.
2. Internet’s Influence
The internet plays a major role in influencing the memory of the masses. In fact, it’s a great possibility that the Mandela effect has grown because of the digital world.
Since the internet is a powerful way of spreading information, the potential to form misconceptions to gain a following and fame is common.
Based on these false beliefs, people create communities—these communities present imagination as factual information. According to 10 years of study by Twitter, rumors, frauds, and bluffs easily won over truths more than 70% of the time.
Bottom Line: There Was No Cornucopia in the Logo!
It may seem mindboggling, which it is, but they’re never was a brown horn in the logo. The logo variations throughout the 200 years of the Fruit of the Loom’s establishment shows this.
The Fruit of the Loom logo is an event frequently cited as the direct example of the Mandela Effect.
Multiple people insist that the logo had a horn, while others make promises of not lying about witnessing a horn in the logo.
Moreover, multiple websites still post pictures of the logo with the horn claiming that this was the right version of the logo.
However, if they see the underwear or shirt’s label, they will not find any cornucopia in it. No matter how much you wanted to agree to this, there was no horn. So, there you have it! Now you know if there ever was a horn or not with proofs.