i read a psychologist who said that we do not remember an event, but rather we remember the last time we remembered an event. He likened it to painting a six-panel door over and over until it has so many layers of paint on it you’re seeing only the vague details of what underneath the paint.
Of course, you don’t really remember him making that claim; you just remember remembering him making that claim…
I think the incongruity with the commercial is that, based on the premise as presented, what did they expect to happen?
Mikey hates everything, so he should either refuse to try it, or he tries it and says it’s yucky. That’s clearly what they expected to happen. And if it had, what would they have learned?
It’s only because the unexpected happened that they learned something. That’s actually rather sophisticated behavior, like something a scientist would do, not a couple of grade-school kids.
I’ve offered my theory on the Mandela Effect before. I think the people who “remember” Nelson Mandela dying in the eighties are actually remembering the death of Steve Biko.
Biko was another anti-apartheid leader and he did die in prison. It was 1977 when he died but there was a movie about him, Cry Freedom, which was released in 1987.
I have an arcane one that I’m sure applies only to me. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I remember Ed Begley, Jr. in the role of Bill Murray’s foil, even though it was actually Jeff Goldblum — who, I admit, looks nothing like Ed Begley. Even so, I think back on scenes featuring that character and in my mind I still see Ed there.
There was actually a recent discussion about the Mandela Effect, where I gave my thoughts on it, including the Fruit of the Loom logo. So far, I haven’t been wowed by any of the standard examples, including this one. Consider:
A cornucopia may not be part of the logo, but the fruit are presented in a way as to suggest one should be there.
The FOTL logo is drawn in a style that suggests old-timey woodcuts, and these (or logos based on these) often do show cornucopias. See here for example.
Who knows how many people passed by a grocery store that had a sign, window apron, or advertisting featuring a cornucopia logo printed in the style of a colored woodcut, and simply projected that image onto the FOTL logo. I think the first time I saw a cornucopia may have been on a logo of this kind at a produce market that used to be at a mall in Toronto where my family went regularly. IIRC the place (or some other familiar shop) even sold wicker basket cornucopias.
Considering how easy it is for the mind to conflate things and make associations, it doesn’t surprise me that people misremember things collectively. These absent things that people think are there are simply things that belong in those places.
If such a painting existed, it would be (AFAIK) the only Renaissance-era portrait of a monarch to ever depict him or her holding food.
I couldn’t let such a blatant challenge just sit there. 
My Google-fu isn’t as strong as some you, but I did find this one: Banquet of The Monarchs
For several years I thought the villain in Dead Calm was Ray Liotta and not Billy Zane-while not identical exactly, they do have very similar acting modes.
To me it sounds like the OP (or whoever) is trying to make people “remember” things with leading statements like, “If you said a bunch of fruit in front of a Horn of plenty or a cornucopia…” that semtion specific counterfactuals instead of simply asking people what they do remember.
No, I do not remember anything like that, just a bunch of fruit, and if you showed me a Fruit of the Loom logo with a horn I would assume it was a variation, or more likely not even notice, because I never paid close attention to the small details of their logo, e.g., whether or not there are any lemons, etc. Is that not typical?
“My suspicion is that this is something telling about the way we remember things- maybe it’s not a fully-formed memory, but more of an outline or skeleton that we fill in as we remember it, and in cases like this, we fill in with what seems most plausible, even though it’s not actually what reality was.”
^I’ve always believed this to be what humans do, including myself. In fact I’m 100% certain it’s the case and explains almost every ‘mystery’ brought up in discussions like this. All just my opinion of course.
No, but I’m not saying I can. Just that, to me, a Mandela Effect is about a specific thing you misremember. If you can picture in your head a version that says sherbert but it really says/said sherbet, that works. If it’s just “I didn’t realize the word is technically sherbet,” I wouldn’t count it.
Thus the fact that some people do actually say (and even spell it) sherbert is irrelevant. All that matters is your memory and whether enough other people share this false memory.
It’s the fact that a specific cornucopia works for me that I find the Fruit of the Loom thing interesting. I would not say cornucopias were items I saw often, and I tend to forget they exist. But when I was shown both logos, the one with the cornucopia looked like the right one, and the other one like a modern rebrand.
With most of these, we can find the specific instance that is being conflated. This one, I still haven’t. Maybe there isn’t one, as you suggest, but even that fascinates me.
I guess the Berenstain Bears would also count, but that’s misremembering how to spell a word, which happens all the time.
I heard the word sherbert (my spell check wants to remove the R) before I could read and then it wasn’t something I looked at for twenty years, until I noticed it in the store as sherbet. I assumed that either 3-5 year old me mis-heard, or it’s one of those words that are pronounced not like they are spelled, because I never heard it called anything but sherbert.
It’s the same with the Berenstain Bears for me, the lady that read them to us before I could read said Bernstein. It wasn’t until I had kids and was reading to them that I noticed she was wrong, not that the timeline had changed.
Everyone remembers it sherbert.
And still calls it sherbert even if they know better.
I don’t, at all, and really haven’t known anyone who did. That sounds like the “backwoods ignorant and proud to be” version of the name of the product.
HOMER SIMPSON: My kids don’t eat sorbet, they eat sherbet! And they pronounce it “sherbert.” And they wish it was ice cream.
You don’t need to believe in the alternative universe gobbledygook to find instances of people collectively misremembering things at least remarkable and worthy of being talked about. And once you’re there, you might as well give it a name. And once you’re there giving it a name, you might as well call it the Mandela Effect. What I’m getting at is: You can call it the Mandela Effect and still accept a perfectly rational, Psychology 101-based explanation without relying on alternate universes or any supernatural blah blah.
For me it’s that apparently, now, alligators have the broad round mouth and crocodiles have the more pointy snout. Not sure when the switch happened but I would have bet my life savings on the opposite up until a few years ago.
It’s been pronounced “sherbert” for over 200 years. If you have an issue with that because that’s not how it’s spelled, then welcome to “The English Language.”