Procter & Gamble Logo

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Procter & Gamble Logo

The familiar logo of Procter & Gamble for decades was a design of thirteen stars enclosed in a circle, with a man-in-the-moon. In the wake of the rise of a popular interest in Satanism and anti-Satanism in the late 1960s, the logo gave rise to persistent rumors that the company was run by Satan sympathizers and that the logo expressed allegiance to the devil. The rumor was spread by many conservative Christians and others who had come to believe in an international underground Satanic conspiracy, such as that described in the black magic novels of popular occult writer Dennis Wheatly. The company took a number of public relations countermeasures through the 1970s, but unable to stamp out the rumor, in 1982 it was obliged to take legal measures to defend itself. Procter & Gamble filed two libel suits in July 1982, one against a WXIA television weatherman, another against a Tennessee couple, for spreading such rumors. On April 24, 1985, Procter & Gamble dropped the suits when all three individuals publicly apologized. The logo was, nonetheless, removed from its products.