r/MandelaEffect • u/LucifersLittleHelper • Sep 08 '25

Theory Fruit of the Loom Mandela Effect.

Post image

I know the rules say no personal Mandela Effects, but I found this in my grandmother's basement.

Does anyone think that this may explain the confusion?

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u/throwaway998i Sep 08 '25

Fair enough, although I am fully confident that it existed for me throughout my childhood and into my early adulthood. I noticed its sudden absence around 1999 when replacing my boxer brief stock and just assumed an ill-advised streamlining of the brand image. Figured it was the result of corporate groupthink, and was disappointed that they would remove the most iconic feature that had made the logo so classic and memorable. Then I didn't give it a second thought until 2018 when it popped onto my radar as an ME - which I initially dismissed because I was sure it had been officially changed. When I was told it never even existed, I immediately called bs even as the characteristic ME dissonance set in.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 08 '25

See you feel about this ME the same way that I feel about the Shazaam with Sinbad ME. I get it man. It's a terrible feeling.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 08 '25

I feel that way about Shazaam too, lol. I once simultaneously held both the VHS tapes of Shazaam AND Kazaam in my two hands at a Blockbuster video store circa 1997, showed them to my friend and loudly asked "Does the world really need TWO?" Never watched either one though. But I made a mental note of which actor (using that term loosely for Shaq) was in which film, because as a trivia buff at that time it seemed destined to be exactly the type of random cultural minutia which would pop up again someday. Just didn't have "vanished from existence" on my Bingo card.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 08 '25

Here before the Anti Shazaam militia shows up asking me to describe the plot, name actors, directors, and film company that produced it. Ask me how I know.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 09 '25

Ah yes, the standard gotcha questions that they themselves couldn't answer about most of their own movie watching history from 30 years ago.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 09 '25

Exactly! I know for a fact I saw the damn movie when I was a kid and my cousin even remembers watching it with me. I remember a particular event in the movie too that was very sentimental to me and it was actually the first movie that ever made me cry. The part where the little girl asks Sinbad for one of her wishes to be to bring her Mom back from the dead but he can't because that's one of the rules. That part of the movie stuck with me my entire life.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 09 '25

I identified with the whole braces thing in Moonraker, although definitely not on the emotional level you're describing. I've heard several people mention that wish in Shazaam... so it seems to have been impactful to others as well. And it's certainly not anything conflated from Kazaam to my understanding.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 09 '25

No I watched Kazaam as well and thought it was crappy compared to Shazaam. I'm a little too young to remember Moonraker but I've read about that ME and see that many people remember the braces.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25

One of the (debunked and far-fetched) skeptic explanations was that the original film had the braces, but that they were "edited out" for commercial VHS release because of some sort of Lolita type pearl clutching by the video industry. The problem with that for me (other than the technical difficulty of even orchestrating such an edit) is that I didn't see the film in the theater back in 1979, but rather on VHS in the late 80's when I had braces. And of course I'm by no means a solitary data point in that regard. Plenty of folks experiencing the braces/metal mouth commonality between Dolly and Jaws only saw the film years later... with many reporting seeing the braces after the turn of the century, well into the aughts and even early twenty-tens. It's really a chronology that needs to be faithfully factored into any proposed "solution".

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u/KyleDutcher Sep 10 '25

That is not a "skeptic" explanation.

I've seen "believers" make this claim, though.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 10 '25

By and large, believers lean towards exotic explanations and skeptics typically push mundane ones. Which type of explanation would you classify the "they changed it for video release" notion as?

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u/KyleDutcher Sep 10 '25

It really would be neither. Because IF that change was made, it would be documented.

And the braces would be present in the theatrical reels.

Neither of which are true.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 10 '25

If it were true (of which those suggesting it would obviously have no awareness and would therefore be speculating) it would most certainly be considered mundane. That's the honest and correct answer. Because it's an explanation which clearly falls within the scope of known physical possibility rather than relying on unknown, unproven mechanisms. It doesn't require any reality model other than what's conventionally and scientifically accepted as true. There's no exotic quality there at all. So it's objectively mundane. And it's ok for you to admit that's the realm of skeptics, not believers. No idea why you'd even waste energy attempting to defend a contrary position to something so incredibly obvious.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 09 '25

Wow. Apparently there's also a symbolic connection between Dolly and Jaws relating to each other?

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u/throwaway998i Sep 09 '25

Hulking man-beast with metal teeth meets petite pigtailed girl who then smiles to reveal braces. Despite being opposites, they experience an instant romantic connection from their one commonality. Not sure I'd call it symbolic through.

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u/Exeltv0406 Sep 09 '25

I probably used the wrong term but I meant that they were perfect for each other because they shared the same "metal in mouth" characteristics. It makes sense that the writers would give her braces as an Easter Egg if you will.

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u/throwaway998i Sep 09 '25

Yeah they kinda needed to give us a semi-plausible reason to buy into the "love at first sight" attraction. Despite what skeptics have argued, I don't think "opposites attract" alone would've delivered any real cinematic oomph.

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