[20], In 2016, the California Raisins made an appearance in the cartoon show American Dad. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. BK: So the bottom line was you didn't have industry consensus. By clicking Sign up, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider The answer? In 2010, claymation versions of the California Raisins were featured in the special Christmas episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "A Very Sunny Christmas". Just one piece! 30 of those and you have a second of the commercial. On November 4, 1988, CBS aired a primetime television special called Meet the Raisins! The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. WERNER: We still thought it was cool. It's a tax. Colossal issued a challenge to some of its animators: BRUNSFELD: How can you make a raisin look appealing? A new version of Last.fm is available, to keep everything running smoothly, please reload the site. Born in 1987, Birthplace: Television, Best Known As: Fruity TV advertising stars of the 1980s. Honey, honey yeah. SW: Did it feel at any point while you were working on this album like you were making an ad for raisins? It's very successful in that sense. in 1988. The classic about a man who finds out his woman is cheating on him was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. In 1987, Vinton featured the Raisins singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in A Claymation Christmas Celebration, a Christmas TV special he produced that won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. But back in 1994, almost ten years after the first dancing raisins ad aired, that good feeling was nowhere to be found. All Rights Reserved. An article published by AnimateClay.com in the late 2000s details the whereabouts of the original claymation sculptures used by Vinton Studios. KB: We're not getting our fair share of it. 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. What about Michael Jackson and what he was contributing? Earlier this year, the CRMBwhich did not respond to my request for commenthired a brand new Vice President of Marketing. SPEAKER FOUR: I loved those commercials as a kid, they were so cool. Michael Jackson asked to be featured in a sequel. The game was completed and several video game critics reviewed it, but it was never released on the open market. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Almost all the growers in the room were against it. I Heard It Through The Grapevine - California Raisins. AD FIVE: Honey, are you playing with your food again? SW: When the Dancing Raisins ad stopped airing, Sunmaid's share of direct raisin saleslike in boxes on grocery store shelvesactually increased. And their arms were like small, and they had like little legs. If you would like to know how we handle complaints, please click, . The "Heard It Through the Grapevine" theme is fabulous. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. In 1985, both halves of the industry were funding CALRAB. Don't you know that I heard it through the grapevine. The band broke up. Needless to say, their band history borrowed heavily from the types of origin stories real bands tended to have. WERNER: We want sunglasses on them, I want to put them in Converse sneakers, but untie the laces, and they gotta look hip, basically. Or did the dancing California raisins cause more trouble than they were worth? Between 12th and 14th Streets Definitely [both laugh]. And because they were big companies, not headquartered in the Fresno circle, they were not at the table, and participating in all of this back-and-forth. HARDEES AD: Announcing the big plush bendable California Raisins at Hardees SW: There were California Raisins Halloween costumesthey were bestsellers in 1988. SPEAKER EIGHT: And I guess subliminally, it probably worked because I do remember eating raisins as a snack. Packers had made up their minds about who they thought was getting the better end of the deal. The growers are the ones with the vines. And he says, even though the Dancing Raisins are long gone, he and the rest of the industry are still dealing with the fallout. Label. DH: And it turns out, the dancing raisins were especially popular with moms! With a budget in hand, the agency hired Will Vinton, the Oscar-winning animator who would later trademark the term "Claymation," to help create their vision of dancing raisins. THE THROWBACK MACHINE: Going for the gold, but coming up blonde. Most of the time when we buy raisins, we have no idea where they came from. SW: Kalem Barserian, raisin industry veteran, again. onefunplace. Javascript is required to view shouts on this page. While the vines may feel special to their growerslike children!to you and me? Because animators arranged each shot by hand, giving each raisin its own distinct personality (including individualized facial expressions and colorful sunglasses), the commercial took more than a month to shoot. 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. Seth Werner, the young copywriter newly in charge of the California Raisins account, had a concept. The raisin packers didn't reach this decision because anyone had anything against the ad, or because licensing fees had stopped rolling in, or even because raisin sales were down. The commercials were produced by Vinton Studios using their claymation technique, with character designs by Michael Brunsfeld. Dancing Raisins Heard It Through the Grapevine. Hey Sarah. 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 II is a 1990 claymation television special directed by Will Vinton, featuring the advertising characters The California Raisins. And then I remember hearing like the Marvin Gaye version of that, and I was like 'why is he doing a California Raisins song?' Watch the video for I Heard It Through the Grapevine from California Raisins's Sing The Hit Songs for free, and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. And the band wasn't playing heavy metal or rock 'n' roll. The ad was fun, but, to quote The Fruits of Their Labors again, it "made no effort to sell raisins. (laughs) These little guys took over everybody's hearts and minds, so it didn't surprise us at the time. He wasn't worried about making the most of this one shot and impressing his boss. Jun 1, 2013 - Explore The Goodwill Geek's board "Heard it Through the Grapevine.", followed by 362 people on Pinterest. Test your MusicIQ here! Michael Jackson asked to be featured in a sequel. What's the whole campaign? SW: Kalem says the vote on whether or not to approve the ad was extremely close. https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/34693/The+California+Raisins/I+Heard+It+Through+the+Grapevine. SW: This process, as you can imagine, took a while. [5] The following year, the Raisins appeared in the Emmy Award-winning A Claymation Christmas Celebration, singing the Christmas carol "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". It keeps you in shape. Werner and Fedor also thought that the commercial should use clay animation, a type of stop-motion animation using characters or settings made out of clay or other similarly pliable materials, rather than regular cartoon animation. CALRAB gave the "Grapevine" pitch the green light. Raisin farmers rely on good weather and conditions to grow their product. And on top of everything else, he says there's one subject of conversation that just won't drop. But that wasn't the story around town. Eligibility determined at checkout. It seems like everyone in Motown heard about this song "through the grapevine" before it was finally recorded. Web. Box Office Software produced a different, unrelated California Raisins computer game in 1988 for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and PC compatibles. Little disagreements surfaced. SW: Again, Seth Werner, sockless ad copywriter. They needed to be the life of the snack bar. Was the Dancing Raisins ad a success? You got 100,000 tons. ', SW: Barry Kriebel was president of Sunmaid at the time. And by the end of the night, all anyone could agree on was that one of the siblings was getting a bigger cut than everyone else. 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. Not this time, however! Kalem Barserian will tell you the ad made the raisin industry money, and he will pull out a calculator to prove it. Got 100,000 tons, more sales than you would have if you didn't do this. et Cie, S.C.A. But an even bigger faction of raisin packers did not have their own name-brands. The face took up most of the raisin's body MB: And then there was little wrinkles here and there, but the more you emphasize that, the more it looked, you know, kind of like a weird prune. A series of weather-related disasters during the '70s had thrown the price of raisins completely out of whack. SW: Seth has a whole scrapbook of these letters. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Can you just give me an assignment? I mean, we didn't do anything short of that. A California Raisins Fan Club began in 1987, which included a Grapevine Gazette newsletter and various memorabilia. Phrases Similar to Heard it Through the Grapevine CH: After the break, five million dollars DOES go a long way, the Dancing California Raisins conga line their way to record deals and awards, and they split the raisin industry right down the middle. I mean, really, most of us don't give raisins a whole lot of attention..they are just kind of everywhere: in our cereals, bagels, and, of course, kid's lunch boxes. How is that better than Ray Charles?'. First of all, you've got that family dynamic. And as that rift widened, the raisins fell right through it. HO: Well there's there's definitely 12:02 some discussion about that I mean in its infancy right now. RAISINS SHOW: You might have heard about us through the old grapevine. But how did a bunch of dried grapes, burdened with the reputationof being a mediocre, boring snack, become synonymous with swagger? But thanks to the California Raisins, its now commonplace to see ads that include anthropomorphized food or candy. Done. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. Who'd have ever thought that a beloved Motown classic would be brought back to life by a bunch of animated dried fruit? These days, some growers are abandoning ship entirely, ripping out their vineyards and planting almonds instead. He wrote to Foot Cone and Belding specifically requesting a VHS copy of the ad so he could watch it whenever he wanted to. SPEAKER THREE: The one song I remember them doing all the time was "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" To the point where I was a kid and I hadn't, I don't think it really clicked to me that that was like a real song. Required fields are marked *. And, for better or worse, they're also in it together on that front. Casey Holford and John DeLore composed our theme. BK: It actually got to the point where the Dancing Raisins had their own television show. Oh! Lived here my whole life. This is Brought to you by Brands you know, stories you don't. SPEAKER TEN: We had the Christmas special on videotape, we probably watched it like three or four times a December, between when I was like 4 and 8. Nature's candy. The claymation raisins singing and dancing to Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" became a kids TV show, recorded an album that went platinum, launched a range of toys and costumes, and starred in an Emmy-winning Christmas special. Umpteen searches though the archives using the terms "California Raisins" and "Hardee's" came up mostly empty, except for . As of the 2010s, packages of Sun-Maid Natural California Raisins still feature an updated California Raisin character. They were all over the country, on mugs and lunchboxes and tee shirts. (981) $9.95. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online. Losin' you would end my life you see. It would go on to produce the Dancing Raisins ad. A short time after that, he sat in a studio and sang the words into a microphone while strumming his guitar along with a few friends. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. These albums were included in the Smithsonian collection and were illustrated and art-directed by Helane Freeman, who later became famous for her work on Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, among other Disney programs. Merchandise sales included toys and Raisins images on nearly every conceivable medium: lunch boxes, notebooks, clothing, posters, bedsheets, and even a Halloween costume, just to name a few. I says, 'in Canada? And since there wasn't a "Dancing Raisin" brand in the store, small packers worried Sunmaid was getting all the business. Bill Moss is our sound engineer. But anyway, there's this one line in the story that implies that even though the ad went on to be super successful, even though you and I still remember it all these years later, it may have precipitated some really huge divisions within the raisin industry. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it. The California Raisins merchandising snowballed into 300 different products, including clothing, bed sheets, Halloween costumes, car accessories, lunch boxes, and even toilet paper. Ended: 27 Feb, 2023 23:10:08 GMT. The lead singer is wailing, wearing shadesnaturally, since they were raised in the California sunshine. Was Marvin Gaye spinning in his grave? Okay? You know? KB: Vine doesn't know who it belongs to. November 12, 1986 SW: You guys, it's from Paul McCartney's manager. 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. Photo: A Claymation Christmas Celebration / CBS The Raisins Were Featured In Will Vinton's 'Claymation Christmas Celebration' On CBS In 1987 There were some other big names, like Dole and Del Monte, but they didn't just sell raisins. He says if it had just been up to him, he would not have ended CALRAB and therefore the Dancing Raisins. The community that created them, and the questions they left in their wake. There were California Raisins lunchboxes, then Hardee's started handing out plastic Raisins figurines with Cinnamon 'n' Raisin biscuits. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online. From Performing Songwriter Issue 111, July/Aug 2008. 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. America's favorite raisin. He's a reporter covering raisins and grapes for one of the trade magazines his family publishes. Werner's big idea was going to be a risk, especially without the celebrity spokesperson the client had requested. RV: Oh no, to me it at one point it kind of went beyond that. And this is what I told him. Leave a message at (646) 768-4777, or email us at btyb@insider.com. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. It wasn't at The Fillmore in San Francisco or the Troubadour in LA. CH: A raisin by any other name would be a dried grape. McCartney. Yeah. And maybe some people are pessimistic about it, I don't know, maybe people are tired of just the lack of unity. Hey, I heard it through the grapevine Not much longer would you be mine Said I heard it through the grapevine Hey, I'm just about to lose my mind Honey, honey, yeah (Heard it through the grapevine Not much longer would you Be my baby, yeah, yeah, yeah) Honey, honey, I know That you're letting me go Hey, I heard it through the grapevine And they were hearing from those ingredient customers that they had an issue with the ads: BK: Some large customers felt they were paying for it. Matthew has observed his fair share of contentious industry meetings. CH: I remember those really well. California Raisins poster vintage 1987 Heard it Through The Grapevine. They sold most of their raisins in bulk, to ingredient customers, like cereal brands or bakeries. Today, the story of the California Dancing Raisins. AD SEVEN: I heard it through the grapevine! KB: I'll never forget, he was a handsome guy, had white shoes on, no socks, had an earring in this ear, he had the ghetto blaster up on his shoulders, and he turns it on and it's "Heard It Through the Grapevine.". SW: Lots of details would have to be worked out first. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. 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. Instead, it was a group of tiny, claymation raisins playing a Motown hit in a national ad campaign. The success of the dancing raisins exposed fractures in the industry which had been forming just under the surface for decades. I Heard It Through the Grapevine Lyrics by California Raisins from the Meet the Raisins! SW: And then at the end the announcer says: WERNER: I remember when I went to college, people would say 'there are three or four ways you can do an advertisement. Very serious-like. I voted to kill it too. Listen to music by California Raisins on Apple Music.
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