This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/IHad360K_KarmaDammit on 2024-08-27 22:05:00+00:00.
Before you read any further, I want you to think about Fruit of the Loom. Yes, the clothing company. Just picture their logo to yourself and remember what it looks like before reading on.
Did you picture something like this? Because if so, you’re wrong. That cornucopia in the background isn’t there, and never was. It’s just a pile of fruit. (If you only remembered a pile of fruit, then congrats on being correct.)
This is one of the best-known examples of what’s often known online as the Mandela Effect, in which large numbers of people remember something wrong in the same, very consistent way. And you’re definitely not alone if you remember the cornucopia, as large numbers of people online insist that they’ve seen that logo. Animated movies and cartoons show a similar logo on clothes, complete with cornucopia. Books from long before this became an internet phenomenon casually mention the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia, going all the way back to the 1960s. A 1973 Frank Wess album, Flute of the Loom, parodies the FotL logo, complete with cornucopia-shaped flute.
None of this stuff is official or sponsored by FotL, and the company itself has never used anything resembling the cornucopia logo, but for whatever reason, large numbers of people over a period of decades have incorrectly thought that it did. And while some of these could be faked, or just the result of people pretending to “remember” this logo for attention, there are enough people who insist they remember the cornucopia that faking it would require an enormously, unrealistically elaborate conspiracy.
That’s just one well-known example of the Mandela Effect, though. This post is about a different example–how do you spell the Berenstain Bears?
Who are the Berenstain Bears?
They’re a family of humanoid bears who have funny adventures and learn valuable lessons through a series of children’s books selling over 260 million copies, multiple TV shows, and a merchandising empire with enough toys, video games and spinoffs to rival Garfield or Pokemon. They’re named after the original creators of the series, Stan and Jan Berenstain, and they’ve been around since 1962.
They are, notably, not called the Berenstein Bears. This does not stop large numbers of people from insisting that they are.
This claim is mentioned online going back to the mid-2000s, but the first place it really got popular was a 2012 blog post and its 2014 follow-up. Or at least they were pretty popular and the comments have a lot of funny drama, so I’m going to assume they played a major part in the history of misspelling Berenstain and go with that. Both posts discussed the weirdness of discovering that the blogger’s memory of the Berenstein Bears was completely incorrect, and semi-jokingly suggested that it might be due to a separate hexadectant of four-dimensional spacetime overlapping our own. The Berenstains’ son (or someone claiming to be him, at least) even showed up and confirmed that Berenstain is the correct spelling. These posts got hundreds of thousands of views and hundreds of comments, all of which, of course, were perfectly reasonable, polite and sane, as you can see from these examples:
“You’re an idiot. AND an a-hole. I imagine your pleasure stick is pretty insignificant as well.”
“String Theory demonstrates 10 (not 11) total dimensions of space-time with 4 (H,W,D+time) observable and 6 unperceivable. The 6 “unknown” are in actuality multidimensional links to 6 alternate universes that “travel” grouped in interwoven timelines which are in turn linked to 6 other alternates (to infinitus) within a fullerene structured membrane loop. Our conscience mind can only be aware of one timeline at a time, but can “switch” awareness any of the 6 linked alternates at a quantum half-step of the membrane’s “clock” that synchronizes the grouped time-lines “physical” strings.”
“I call bullshit on “anonymous berenstain”. TROLL. I remember the spelling. My family remembers it. EVERYONE I ASK TO SPELL IT FROM MEMORY SPELLS IT WITH AN E.”
“Teaching Children the Gospel doesn’t do shit. I know it for a fact, if there was a god, then nothing in the world that is considered as “bad” would ever happen.”
“Well Anonymous if you would bother to read and researh the Bible then you would know why there are bad things going on. So unless you read the facts please don’t make say that what you say is facts. Ok ??? Thank you and may GOD forgive and bless you. Here is a well known fact – there are no athiest in a foxhole !!!”
"The Berenstein Bear books were indeed “parallel reality” books. They are markers from Odin himself. It means your parents would rape you if they could get away with it. Luckily the manner of how the matrix works means nothing really happened. Remember that dream you had of 2 men stealing you and covering your mouth so you can’t scream? I guarantee everyone from the Berenstein universe had this dream, Berenstain universe may or may not.
I promise great retribution. My soul will not allow for any other outcome.
Everyone gets to be janitor God for some amount of time. Lucifer is far below the great devil. Knowledge is poisonous to our stories. Throwing us away from direct experience is the ultimate sin. The glitch is specifically for the alchemical power of the bear. The bear is Lucifer’s sons alchemical animal."
“Stop wasting our time with the crappy conspiracy of yours just because you and many people of this earth are too retarded to read. Shameful.”
“You people are insane. Get meds.”
“We started reading them to our first two children, but my wife noticed that the father bear was ALWAYS wrong and ended up looking stupid. She refused to give our children that input, and banned the books from our house – and, I believe, the church nursery she directed. But as much as we hate the books, we KNOW they were Berenstein.”
“Elite agenda to make father figures seem stupid and incompetent (see Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin). Promotes feminism.”
“The problem is uneducated and a large number of rather ignorant Americans. People who cannot even spell and read/write in their own fricking native language. Just go out “on the net” and see how people have problems with simple things like there, their, they’re, “would of” <– Cheezus Christ and even more abominations. Because of this I don’t buy for one $0.01 what the typical American thinks how it was spelled. BerenstEin or BerenstAin sure would already be way over many people’s intellectual capabilities, let alone their ability to correctly remember the actual spelling.”
“Maybe draw attention to the true jews?? Also anagram to inner beast and stain anagram to satin. A poor spelling. Changing the name just have a satanic fascist memory whole vibe to me.”
Further Events
As for further events in the “misspelling the name of cartoon bears and insisting you are right” fandom, well, there aren’t really any. Oh, certainly, people continue to argue about it on the internet. Every few years some clickbait website will run out of celebrities to gossip about and make a post about how “Your CHILDHOOD MEMORIES About the Berenstein Bears are WRONG!”
But ultimately, every discussion of this–or any supposed Mandela Effect–just involves the same three things that already appeared in that comment section back in 2012, repeated over and over. The first one is “I remember this, and there is no way I could possibly be wrong about it, and it must have a paranormal explanation”. The second one is “You’re just remembering wrong and you’re stupid”. The third one is pure, undiluted madness in the form of nonsensical rants about God and Satan and quantum parallel universes and probably the Jews.
Ultimately, the truth is that even if imagining parallel universes surrounding minor details of your favorite cartoons is a fun hobby, the Mandela Effect is pretty easily explained by people remembering stuff wrong. And there are plenty of reasons why they would make that mistake! Most children will be familiar with names like “Einstein” and “Frankenstein” by the time they start reading about the Berenstain Bears, while -stain names are very uncommon. The voice actors on the various TV adaptations often pronounce the name incorrectly as “steen” or “stine”, so kids might assume that the spelling matches that. And the titles are always in cursive, in which a lowercase e and a look very similar, es…
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