If asked to describe underwear manufacturer Fruit of the Loom's logo from memory, some will invariably say it includes — or at least included at some point in time — a horned bowl known as a cornucopia. This perception is considered a classic example of the Mandela Effect. In basic terms, the Mandela Effect refers to instances of "collective misremembering" in which large numbers of people share the same false belief.
The belief that the Fruit of the Loom logo included a cornucopia is strongly held. A post on Quora captures this viewpoint:
I have a strong opinion about the Fruit of the Loom logo and whether it had a cornucopia or not. I remember seeing a cornucopia in the logo when I was a kid, and I learned what it was from my school. A cornucopia is a horn-shaped basket that is filled with fruits and vegetables, and it symbolizes abundance and prosperity. I think the cornucopia made sense for the Fruit of the Loom brand because it showed that they had a variety of quality products.
An image of the purported logo is often shared in defense of this claim:
However, that is a fabrication, not the actual Fruit of the Loom logo.
The perception of a cornucopia goes back decades. For example, a 1994 piece in a local Florida paper about the actor, Samuel Wright, who played Sebastian the Crab in "The Little Mermaid" and who also appeared in Fruit of the Loom commercials, repeated the assertion that the logo contained a cornucopia in print:
For 19 years, Wright made anywhere from 120-140 television commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear. And he didn't even wear Fruit of the Looms. He wore skimpy bikini briefs. "My wife is European," he says from a hotel room in Tampa.
"She said (cotton underwear) made me look like an old man." Anyhow, Fruit of the Loom's logo was initially a cornucopia swollen with an apple, green grapes, purple grapes, and their green leaves. Wright was the purple grape cluster. And he had to pretend Fruit of the Looms never found them that were great.
While the existence of these commercials is factual, one cannot help but note that nobody played a cornucopia in the actual the commercial series referenced in this article:
The company has, as well, officially weighed in on the claim. On June 26, 2023, the company tweeted an image from a USA Today crossword puzzle that included the clue "Fruit of the ____ (company that does not, in fact, have a cornucopia in its logo)." They noted that the "Mandela Effect is real" but that the cornucopia claims were false:
The Mandela Effect is real, the cornucopia in our logo is not 🍇 pic.twitter.com/qoiuvemsIy
— Fruit of the Loom (@FruitOfTheLoom) June 26, 2023
The Fruit of the Loom logo has always contained an apple, green grapes, purple grapes, and leaves. Snopes searched archived newspaper advertisements from every decade from the 1910s to the 2020s and could not locate a single one with a cornucopia:
(Snopes.com)
Because no verified image of a Fruit of the Loom containing a cornucopia exists in print, and because the company has officially stated that its logo has never contained a cornucopia, the claim is False.