Why Some People Swear Jif Peanut Butter Was Once Called Jiffy

Whether you prefer it spread on PB&Js or stuffed into ants on a log, there's no question that peanut butter brings back sweet childhood memories for many eaters. However, there's something a little strange about some people's nut butter-fueled nostalgia: they claim to remember a time when Jif peanut butter was called Jiffy. No, this isn't one of those major food rebrands you never even noticed: Jif has always been called Jif, never Jiffy. However, the idea that it used to be called Jiffy is so widespread that Jif has felt the need to address the issue. On its FAQ page, the peanut butter brand assures customers wondering when, exactly, "Jiffy" peanut butter became Jif that "we have always been called Jif® since our company was first founded in 1958."

Don't worry, if you could swear you remember Jiffy peanut butter, you haven't gone nuts. The reason so many people experience this false memory is best explained by the Mandela effect — a phenomenon where people collectively misremember events or details. The effect got its name from the inaccurate but surprisingly widespread belief that former South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s (he didn't — and Gordon Ramsey fondly remembers cooking Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday dinner before he died in 2013 at age 95).

It can often feel like memory is an indisputable fact, especially when you distinctly remember that you had a box of baking soda stashed in the back of your pantry (luckily, there are plenty of easy substitutions for key baking ingredients). However, the truth is a bit stickier. It's impossible to perfectly remember every single detail of every event that occurs, so we tend to fill in the inevitable gaps in our memory using associations and, inevitably, biases. For example, in another case of the Mandela effect, Looney Tunes has never been spelled Looney Toons. Many people falsely remember it as "Toons" because they associate Looney Tunes with cartoons (and honestly, it just feels right that there should be double o's in both words).

Since many people associate peanut butter with both Jif and Skippy (two of the best peanut butter brands), it makes sense that the names are commonly mixed up in hazy childhood memories to create Jiffy, the phantom peanut butter that never existed. To make things even more confusing, although Jif peanut butter was never called Jiffy, Jiffy is a real baking mix brand that may also have been a fixture of your childhood kitchen (and makes the greatest coffee cake of your life). No matter what you call it, there's no doubt that our favorite peanut butter brand is an unbeatable classic.