SPEAKER EIGHT: And I guess subliminally, it probably worked because I do remember eating raisins as a snack. And most of the people spending millions of dollars don't want to know there are two guys sitting in a back room trying to make each other laugh and come up with this stuff, but that is what we did. The briefthe goal of the campaignwas to come up with a commercial that would make customers see raisins differently. Lead vocals in the group were sung by musician Buddy Miles. If you have a question relating to the museum's collections, please first check our Collections FAQ. The California Raisins released four studio albums on Priority Records, BMG, and ZTT Records between 1987 to 1994, and their signature song, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", landed on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number 84 or 85. TikTok video from Shug (@sonyastanford2). The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. California Raisins. 80s classic toys. What's the whole campaign? There is also some good news though! (laughs). You know how families can be about money. SETH WERNER: It wasn't back then, and it still isn't now. The California Dancing Raisins ad has been called one of the best of all time. Or 'if it's bad for Sunmaid, it's gotta be good for them. If you saw a commercial you liked, you couldn't look it up on YouTube and send a link to a friend. Although Vinton made one last Claymation TV movie about the Raisins in 1990, the end of the '80s brought a decline in the Raisinss popularity. Don't you know that I heard it through the grapevine. SW: Seth has a whole scrapbook of these letters. And then we threw the baby out with the bathwater. California Raisins poster vintage 1987 Heard it Through The Grapevine. Like the Archies before them, the imaginary band was a hit. Web. We were so embarrassed. Constitution Avenue, NW First aired on September 14, 1986, Werner's idea for a 30-second television commercial introduced audiences to The California Raisins, a group of anthropomorphized raisins with expressive. Scientists mull polarized light detection from alien life-forms, Nano-mechanical sensors wired using photonics, E. coli outbreak leads to massive flour recall, First human CRISPR trial passes safety and ethics review, Cephalopods: Natures camouflaging masters, Scientists detect gravitational waves for the second time, Colorful secrets of chemical elements with slow motion flames. Raisins are not like cell phone brands, with unique features and better WiFi connectivity and a sleeker feel than their competitors. It was the sequel to the Emmy-nominated special Meet the Raisins! Several California Raisins music albums were also released, featuring classic Motown and rock standards. Like, growing up, we had this little figurine in our doll house, and my parents dressed up as them one year for Halloween. Their cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" peaked at #84 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. First, they provide tools the industry can use to regulate the raisin market. Can you just give me an assignment? CH: We're back. SW: All of those different factors combined add up to the final, and most important challenge for the raisin industry. Your email address will not be published. The plot of the game involved Tiny Goodbite having to rescue his friends who have been kidnapped and held in a cereal factory. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. KB: Grape and raisin grower. Scrobbling is when Last.fm tracks the music you listen to and automatically adds it to your music profile. Now, the story of a man many call an outlaw. It lost message. SW: This is what raisin packing sounds like. 16:20 How do you distinguish your raisin bagel from my field to your field? It's that simple. It wasn't true. KB: We're not getting our fair share of it. Unlike the smaller brands in the industry, it could afford to pay for that space. Now, somebody just had to turn Seth Werner's concept into a real commercial. Label. Just one piece! By the time "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" hit #1, the song had been sitting there for more than two years. You don't, right? So, growers and packers paid a tax on every ton of raisins they produced. onefunplace. RV: I said, 'I think that's a great idea.' Remember, he reports on the raisin industry. SW: His boss had him working mostly on trade adsstuff for industry publications not the kind of campaigns you or I would ever see in a commercial or on a billboard. They weren't in the shelf. Seth Werner and CALRABthe agency responsible for hyping up California raisinsthey had delivered a hit. A series of weather-related disasters during the '70s had thrown the price of raisins completely out of whack. AD SIX: Oh, I heard it through the grapevine! He watched the original commercial spin off into more and more distant territory. They used themselves to make them human. Heard it, heard it! I mean, you can imagine that! Price: 16.01. View wiki That could mean that while the ad was running, more customers were buying store-brand raisins instead of Sunmaid raisins and store brand raisins were supplied by those other California raisin packers. And on top of everything else, he says there's one subject of conversation that just won't drop. BK: It actually got to the point where the Dancing Raisins had their own television show. The Dancing California Raisins were a go. 30 of those and you have a second of the commercial. SW: When the Dancing Raisins ad stopped airing, Sunmaid's share of direct raisin saleslike in boxes on grocery store shelvesactually increased. BK: So the bottom line was you didn't have industry consensus. SW: Let me explain. Which wasn't true. Sheet Music Oh I heard it through the grapevine. SW: Then, you've got nature to think about. They were tired of paying into a shared piggybank for the greater good. ROSS VANNELLI: Well how about doing an album? And since they were already touring the country, at least on TV screens, there was only one logical next step. WERNER: We went there because we had to meet the growers, and so we would drive, what was it, an hour, 90 minutes to Fresno from San Francisco, and the account people were all nervous on the way there like 'what are we going to do?'. Oh I'm just about to lose my mind. And, I didn't know this, but nearly 100 percent of the raisins the U.S. produces come from within a 60 mile radius of the city. I said, 'the only thing I would do, because at that time, you know, you had things like the Chipmunks and all these different things for kids,'. I don't need to prove anything to anybody. SW: He just turned 82, and for the last few decades, he's been privy to almost every dispute in raisin land, and lots of them have landed on his desk. They filed a petition, and that's it! Earlier this year, the CRMBwhich did not respond to my request for commenthired a brand new Vice President of Marketing. The California Raisins are a fictional rhythm and blues musical group comprised of anthropomorphized raisins. SW: One of the people who saw that ad was Michael Jackson. He has faith in the industry's ability to work this out. If I tell everybody some fictitious story about you know, Chicken Little, right now to you, they might know it in Madera by 2 o'clock. Eligibility determined at checkout. The California Raisins released four studio albums in 1987 and 1988, and their trademark, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," was on the Billboard Hot 100. [9] Blackthorne Publishing also released a six-issue comic book series entitled The California Raisins 3-D which included 3D glasses; these would later be re-released in the Ultimate Collection trade paperback. Get instant explanation for any lyrics that hits you anywhere on the web! MICHAEL JACKSON: And Will, keep these guys still until they do the heard it! ', 'Today during Ryan's Hope I saw the cutest commercial. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. And they should pretty much be still once they do their heard it! The article ranked The California Raisins' premiere advertisement, "Lunchbox", at #15 with comments by ad agency executive Claude Jacques and described the Raisins as "The coolest wrinkled musicians this side of the Stones. Just to make the ad would cost $300,000. Raisins, dressed up in white gloves and sunglasses, dancing to Marvin Gaye's "I heard it through the grapevine." Honey, honey yeah. BK: Well, the simplest way to answer that is, 'how do you define success?' So, there's an alphabet soup of different boards and agencies and committees to help make that happen. The Raisins released numerous studio albums in the 1980s, starred in a cartoon series, and were nominated for an Emmy for their 1988 "Meet the Raisins" mockumentary. But back in 1986, going viral was not yet a thing. 84 on the Billboard Hot 100. They even earned an Emmy nomination! And then they called me and they said, 'you know what it's platinum in Canada too!' Like the whole body was just a head, with arms and legs waving about. Werner and his copywriting partner, Dexter Fedor, knew that they needed to make the dried fruit less of an afterthoughtthe raisins needed personality. And the US, by the way, is the second largest raisin producer in the entire world. Playlist, Written by: Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, Lyrics Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Tratore. With lead vocals by former Jimi Hendrix and Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles, the Raisins put out two platinum albums, and spun out a Michael Jackson soundalike ad as well as a spot voiced by the real Ray Charles. CH: A raisin by any other name would be a dried grape. So many of you remembered that Christmas special. And that takes unity. SW: CALRAB came up with and promoted new recipes that used raisins, it went to bakery conventions, it pitched raisin stories to food magazines and newspapers. Hell no! Our collection database is a work in progress. And that is something producer that producer Sarah Wyman has made very clear to me since she began digging into the orgins of the California dancing raisins ad. The lead singer is wailing, wearing shadesnaturally, since they were raised in the California sunshine. Was Marvin Gaye spinning in his grave? Please take time to look at pictures I try and show condition clear as possible. CEO of the wine bargaining association for five years. They were the California Raisins. The figures were kept in a box for several years and headed for the trash before being obtained by Webster Colcord, a former employee of Vinton. MM: At every industry meeting I go to, it seems like someone's asking, some raisin grower's asking 'are you ever going to bring the raisin, dancing raisins back?' This commercial has witimaginationand it was good enough that I went and bought a box of Californian grown raisins.'. Your email address will not be published. SW: Those people started calling CALRAB and the ad agency, asking when and where the ad would play again. And because Sunmaid was so much biggerthe Kleenex of raisins!they suspected that brand was getting a bigger share of the sales that had trickled down from the ad. SPEAKER NINE: Definitely didn't make me any more of a fan of raisins. Besides appearing in short commercials, The California Raisins shared their musical chops in television specials. RV: And I set it up in the studio exactly how like an old Motown session would be. SW: The raisins dance around on the lid of his grand piano while he belts out the band's catchphrase: AD SIX: Oh I heard it through the grapevine! [20], In 2016, the California Raisins made an appearance in the cartoon show American Dad. And he says, even though the Dancing Raisins are long gone, he and the rest of the industry are still dealing with the fallout. He wrote to Foot Cone and Belding specifically requesting a VHS copy of the ad so he could watch it whenever he wanted to. Harry Overly became the new president of Sunmaid in 2017. It's a pop song reimagined as a nervous breakdown. But were they a success for the raisin industry? The dancing raisins got caught in the crossfire of a heated debate within the industry. CH: From Business Insider. The band broke up. But I think we're heading in a positive direction now. We love hearing from you. And he made it very clear to me right off the bat that no one, him included, would be interested in talking about the New York Times story I'd read. They needed to be the life of the snack bar. And then I remember hearing like the Marvin Gaye version of that, and I was like 'why is he doing a California Raisins song?' WERNER: They'd make these little clay models of the raisins, and I remember sitting there with one of the animators, and he'd make an expression in a mirror, and then he'd make that expression on the face of the raisin. To access our initial disclosure document, please click, Get the item you ordered or your money back. Think you know music? But in 1994, the raisin industry abruptly pulled the plug on the ad and its spinoffs, and still debates whether or not it was successful. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. in 1988. Constitution Avenue, NW HO: Well there's there's definitely 12:02 some discussion about that I mean in its infancy right now. Commissioned by the California Raisin Advisory Board (CALRAB), a trade group of raisin producers in Californias Central Valley, the commercial was part of a multi-million dollar campaign to combat slowing raisin sales. We apologize for the interruption. [10] Different collections were produced in 1987, 1988, 1991, and finally in 2001 (the latter adding Carl's Jr. due to their late '90s acquisition of Hardee's) for their new stylization. Fresno is a dusty, medium-sized city in the middle of California's central valley. Today, the story of the California Dancing Raisins. Sunmaid had always been the golden child, and now, they were making off with the family fortune. And it became more entertainment than strategy. Heard it! Seth and his colleagues were getting fan mail forwarded to themfrom viewers, TV stations, and other advertising execs. SW: Michael Jackson sent Will Vinton a video with instructions for how he wanted the claymation to lookdown to the motions and facial expressions the backup raisins were making in the background of the ad. They help out with keeping prices stable and have an eye on supply and demand. Brought to you by is a production of Insider Audio. Play with guitar, piano, ukulele, or any instrument you choose. And if the California raisin family wanted to avert economic disaster, it needed to band together and find a way to sell more raisins. SW: That's another thing that makes the raisin industry different. If you require a personal response, please use ourContact page. Kalem Barserian will tell you the ad made the raisin industry money, and he will pull out a calculator to prove it. BK: If you're one of the largest ingredient buyers for bread or cereal or something, then really you're paying for it, right? WERNER: We still thought it was cool. MICHAEL BRUNSFELD: The first step in this was we need somebody to create some raisins that are going to dance around. PDF KB: And at this point, even though I had to vote to kill it, I side on the other side, where I helped put that program together, and was successful for ten years. It keeps you in shape. WERNER: A frame was one snapshot. And even in the 1990s, Sunmaid was like the "Kleenex" of the raisin industry. (981) $9.95. Matthew has observed his fair share of contentious industry meetings. Michael Jackson asked to be featured in a sequel. KB: Couldn't find it! Sunmaid. He said: WERNER: He would not approve the nose that I put on the raisin, no matter what I did, he wouldn't approve of it! Box Office Software produced a different, unrelated California Raisins computer game in 1988 for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and PC compatibles. The game was completed and several video game critics reviewed it, but it was never released on the open market. So when his friends were like WERNER: 'What are you gonna do with that? The show would have animated raisins acting as rockstars, and the song, "I heard it through the grapevine," was the California Raisins number-one single. But there's one letter that really stands out: WERNER: Okay, this is from the Fitzgerald-Hartley Company. I heard it through the grapevine. Even if you weren't alive to see the advertisements, TV. SPEAKER THREE: They sang we three kings with also these camels that were all claymation. The Hardee's restaurant chain offered these as part of a promotion for its Cinnamon 'N' Raisin biscuits. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions. [22], Last edited on 21 February 2023, at 23:33, "TV Review; 'Claymation Christmas,' On CBS", "On View: A Feat of Clay: The Creator of California Raisins Molds an Animated Easter Special", "Stardom Is Feat Of Clay For California Raisins", "Bad 25: Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life", "The California Raisins for Commodore 64 (1988)", "California Raisin Raisin Puppets: Late 80s - Early 90s", "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas", "Celebrating Every '80s Reference in That RadioShack Super Bowl Commercial", "California Raisins Set for Comeback in Live-Action Feature", Official Will Vinton (LAIKA) Studios Site, The Clay and Stop-Motion Animation How-To Page: "California Raisin Raisin Puppets: Late 80s - Early 90s", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_California_Raisins&oldid=1140822520, "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)" b/w "I Got You (I Feel Good)" - 1988, Purple Vinyl 7", "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" - 1988 (single, extended peaked at #84 on the, This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 23:33. Lead vocals in the group were sung by musician Buddy Miles. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. CH: This episode was reported and produced by Sarah Wyman, with Julia Press and me, Charlie Herman. And, when it went down, so did the Dancing California Raisins. The success of the dancing raisins exposed fractures in the industry which had been forming just under the surface for decades. BK: You gotta have consensus. Thanks to everyone who left us voicemails and shared their memories of the California Raisins in our Facebook group. But back in 1994, almost ten years after the first dancing raisins ad aired, that good feeling was nowhere to be found. How could this ad that on its surface seems like an unmitigated success also have caused all these other problems? Yeah. If there's anything we can do for you, please give me a call'. 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