SW: Clyde E. Nef, who was CALRAB's manager at the time, wrote about Seth's performance and the board's reaction in his book, The Fruits of Their Labors. KB: Raisin processor for many years in different facilities. SW: And that tax is paying for a campaign that's not even advertising your product! This is Brought to you by Brands you know, stories you don't. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for CALIFORNIA RAISINS: i heard it through the grapevine PRIORITY 7" Single 45 RPM at the best online prices at eBay! And he says, even though the Dancing Raisins are long gone, he and the rest of the industry are still dealing with the fallout. Several photos were taken providing a close look at the Raisins' internal armatures and detailing their extremely poor condition, including the absence of the A.C. puppet's head.[18]. Will Vinton. AD SEVEN: I heard it through the grapevine! Vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles. RV: I think within 4-5 months it was platinum! And some of them played instruments, maybe?SPEAKER TWO: All dancing in the real world, but in their little clay situation.SPEAKER THREE: They were disproportionately raisinly huge. But there was enough leadership to sway the ones that weren't smart enough to realize what a good program it was. So when his friends were like WERNER: 'What are you gonna do with that? Produced by Sarah Wyman, with Charlie Herman and Julia Press. How is that better than Ray Charles?'. SUNMAID AD: My girl talkin' bout my girl. Perhaps the most memorable piece of California Raisins merchandise, however, came in the form of small, non-poseable California Raisins figures. Seth and his colleagues were getting fan mail forwarded to themfrom viewers, TV stations, and other advertising execs. PDF [6] 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. Blastfrompasttoys. My girl!BK: Yeeeeah the marketing guys at Del Monte filed a complaint with the Department of Food and Agriculture over it. BK: No, what we got was him for free, but he wasn't gonna do anything. They starred in two claymation TV shorts, and a Christmas special that won an Emmy! I Heard It Through the Grapevine features a clip the movie The Big Chill where a group of teenagers in a library who are listening to the song through headphones which leads them to dance . And a lot people, including many of our listeners, still remember it really well. Vinton and his team spent weeks making about six different figurines and a set made out of clay. But were they a success for the raisin industry? Back in 1987, the president of Priority Records got in touch with Ross, and he asked him to produce an album of Motown hits, sung by the California Raisins. Raised in the California sunshine WERNER: He volunteered and said 'I won't be paid, I just want to be a raisin, I have one thing I need to ask though, I will not talk to anybody from the advertising agency, and I will not talk to any clients. "[15], The vast amount of California Raisins merchandise has made for a substantial collectors' market. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. SW: Paul. And if the California raisin family wanted to avert economic disaster, it needed to band together and find a way to sell more raisins. He writes: "The thirty seconds of this commercial seemed like an eternity. The "Heard It Through the Grapevine" theme is fabulous. 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. (laughs) These little guys took over everybody's hearts and minds, so it didn't surprise us at the time. It's a tax. 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. Some people were saying they weren't getting a big enough slice of the Dancing Raisins pie. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online. 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?'. From a pop culture standpoint, absolutelypeople all over the world have heard of the Dancing Raisins. SPEAKER ONE: Like obviously, they're raisins, but it just didn't occur to me that like this was a tool to get you to eat like what you see in boxes of raisins. 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. Almost across the board, everyone I spoke to had good things to say about the ad itself. If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. It also gave the band members individual names and roles: A.C. (vocals), Beebop (drums), Stretch (bass), and Red (guitar/piano).[7]. RAISINS: Oooh I heard it through the grapevine, raised in the California sunshine. [8] While cel animated by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, it maintained Will Vinton's creative direction. Claymation was an unproven conceptthis was probably the first time it had been used in a commercial. RV: Oh no, to me it at one point it kind of went beyond that. Demand was down. 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. CHARLIE HERMAN: On September 14, 1986, California's hottest new band made its debut. How would the assessment be collected? HARDEES AD: Announcing the big plush bendable California Raisins at Hardees SW: There were California Raisins Halloween costumesthey were bestsellers in 1988. So, there's an alphabet soup of different boards and agencies and committees to help make that happen. ', SW: Barry Kriebel was president of Sunmaid at the time. SW: This is Seth Werner. SW: Michael Brunsfeld was the commercial animation director at a company called Colossal Pictures, which had been contracted to do a mockup of the ad. Unless you just happened to have a VCR set up and recording at the exact moment the ad aired WERNER: You had to wait and hopefully see it on TV again on some show you were watching and not know when that was coming, and because we didn't have a very big media budget, it wasn't on that often. Almost all the packers resented Sunmaid, but not all for the same reasons. 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. SW: So are the California Raisins coming back, do you thinkthe Dancing California Raisins? Select PayPal Credit to have the option to pay over time. MM: Obviously raisin growers and packers, they compete with each other. What's the whole campaign? Very serious-like. Several California Raisins music albums were also released, featuring classic Motown and rock standards. Required fields are marked *. Not much longer would you be mine. 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 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. Your email address will not be published. SW: That's Alvin and the Chipmunks, for those of you aren't fans. 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. We'll do that.'. It lost message. SPEAKER TWELVE: And it was all claymation, and they'd sing Christmas carols and stuff there were I think other characters and things in it as well. But Barry Kriebel says, at that point, the actual facts had stopped mattering. His crime: growing raisins and then deciding to sell . There is also some good news though! [16], In 2002, the Food Network program Unwrapped featured a segment on The California Raisins featuring interviews with Will Vinton, David Altschul, and Mark Gustafson of Vinton Studios. [Ebm E Ab Eb Cm] Chords for California Raisins Heard it Through the Grapevine (Better Quality) with Key, BPM, and easy-to-follow letter notes in sheet. SW: One of the people who saw that ad was Michael Jackson. Can you just give me an assignment? So, give them raisins! If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. 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. Potato head, but a raisin. So, CALRAB proposed this big advertising campaign, with national TV commercials. It taxed both growers and packers. Label. Or, as they saw it, for Sunmaid's good. ROSS VANNELLI: Well how about doing an album? Still one thing nearly everyone does agree on is the mass appeal of the dancing raisins. First of all, you've got that family dynamic. The California Raisins were the product of an exacerbated ad team, a few broken rules, and the execution of a fascinating visual art form. 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! Remember, he reports on the raisin industry. But in 1994, the. 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. Besides appearing in short commercials, The California Raisins shared their musical chops in television specials. Playlist, Written by: Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, Lyrics Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Tratore. Okay? The dancing raisins got caught in the crossfire of a heated debate within the industry. Start the wiki. And this broke the mold. Photos not available for this variation. He says if it had just been up to him, he would not have ended CALRAB and therefore the Dancing Raisins. This commercial has witimaginationand it was good enough that I went and bought a box of Californian grown raisins.'. SW: This is what raisin packing sounds like. And this is what I told him. Losin' you would end my life you see. I was in the room when it got killed! (laughs). He was so into it that he personally got in touch with Will Vinton, the claymation animator, and asked to be included in his own commercial. The California Raisins II is a 1990 claymation television special directed by Will Vinton, featuring the advertising characters The California Raisins. It even led to an unauthorized collectibles guide published in 1998, cataloging the many items based on the clay characters. 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. KB: Because a raisin is a raisin is a raisin. SW: Back in Fresno, the raisin growers and packers watched with amazement as the Dancing Raisins turned into superstars. So, just like at Thanksgiving dinner, while CALRAB tried to calm everyone down and broker peace from the head of the table, squabbling raisin packers aired old grudges and argued about who was and was not getting their fair share of the cash. CH: From Business Insider. I don't need to prove anything to anybody. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. I don't care how small or whatever, but something that's not part of what you're doing.'. During the peak of their popularity in the late '80s, the California Raisins also had a fan club, merchandise that spanned from plush toys to lunch boxes to air fresheners, and a series of comic books. Constitution Avenue, NW SPEAKER ELEVEN: We watched it in art class when I was in elementary school. Paul McCartney requested his own copy on VHS. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. I treat my vines as if they were my children. Many of the items created for the campaign have become part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. But thanks to the California Raisins, its now commonplace to see ads that include anthropomorphized food or candy. HO: Oh, there's definitely hope. They grow grapes in the beautiful California sunshine and turn them into raisins. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal (Europe) S. r.l. And the band wasn't playing heavy metal or rock 'n' roll. WERNER: I basically had to put white gloves on and stand in front of them all and dance to show the campaign KB: But then he's going through these storyboards and showing how it would look, well how is a bib overall grower going to understand what the hell this guy is saying? Like that. Their cover of Marvin Gaye's &, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our collection database is a work in progress. SW: Between 1986 and 1992, the Dancing Raisins raked in more than 7 million dollars in licensing fees. He just wanted to make an ad he thought was cool. And call them nature's candy. in 1988. I mean, you can imagine that! Strong came up with the idea and asked Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland to work on it with him. as well as other partner offers and accept our, NOW WATCH: An investment chief at HSBC sees huge trading opportunities outside the US. Seth Werner, the young copywriter newly in charge of the California Raisins account, had a concept. SW: Again, Seth Werner, sockless ad copywriter. Between 1987 and 1988, the fictional band released four albums, two of which went platinum. BK: There's always been a 'If it's good for Sunmaid, it's gotta be bad for them.' You know how families can be about money. SW: Almost as soon as it disbanded CALRAB, the raisin industry got to work developing another agency to take its place. Get instant explanation for any lyrics that hits you anywhere on the web! [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. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions. BARRY KRIEBEL: Well that's the problem with the advertising! Raisins, dressed up in white gloves and sunglasses, dancing to Marvin Gaye's "I heard it through the grapevine." Umpteen searches though the archives using the terms "California Raisins" and "Hardee's" came up mostly empty, except for . And they should pretty much be still once they do their heard it! AD SIX: Oh, I heard it through the grapevine! Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform. SW: In the end, the ad went to air. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. If no one liked it, the raisin industry could not get that money back. Seth Werner and CALRABthe agency responsible for hyping up California raisinsthey had delivered a hit. Boards and agencies and committees to help make that happen the Dancing Raisins turned into superstars ' roll please! But were they a success for the raisin industry got to work on it with him metal or '! We got was him for free, but not all for the industry! 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