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. I don't like raisins. As of the 2010s, packages of Sun-Maid Natural California Raisins still feature an updated California Raisin character. Condition: Used. 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. 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. And on top of everything else, he says there's one subject of conversation that just won't drop. in 1988. Sarah Wyman is our showrunner. The California Raisins were a fictional rhythm and blues animated musical group as well as advertising and merchandising characters composed of anthropomorphized raisins. SW: Did it feel at any point while you were working on this album like you were making an ad for raisins? They used themselves to make them human. You can have a talking head, you can have a situation' you know, there were like formulas on how to do this. 16:20 How do you distinguish your raisin bagel from my field to your field? as well as other partner offers and accept our, NOW WATCH: An investment chief at HSBC sees huge trading opportunities outside the US. Washington, D.C. Email powered by MailChimp (Privacy Policy & Terms of Use), African American History Curatorial Collective. SW: All of those different factors combined add up to the final, and most important challenge for the raisin industry. In The Simpsons episode "'Tis the Fifteenth Season", The California Raisins were spoofed as The California Prunes, on a special entitled Christmas with the California Prunes. MATTHEW MALCOLM: I mean you can't just leave any field barren here, because something's gonna grow. 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. All Rights Reserved. Kalem Barserian will tell you the ad made the raisin industry money, and he will pull out a calculator to prove it. SW: And that tax is paying for a campaign that's not even advertising your product! Photo: A Claymation Christmas Celebration / CBS The Raisins Were Featured In Will Vinton's 'Claymation Christmas Celebration' On CBS In 1987 They all want to have them back [sigh] I don't know if it's just because they love the dancing raisins, or I think more than that, is they just want a powerful campaign, you know, backing up California raisins. Sales of raisins themselves increased 20 percent after the first commercial. See terms. They filed a petition, and that's it! 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? SW: Back in Fresno, the raisin growers and packers watched with amazement as the Dancing Raisins turned into superstars. 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. They grow grapes in the beautiful California sunshine and turn them into raisins. Like, when Ray Charles had starred in his ad, he agreed to do a cross-country public relations tour, promoting the health and goodness of California raisins. Possibly, but in their own sweet, silly way, these spots conveyed a sense of mindless fun and gave the humble raisin its moment in the sun. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it. Strong came up with the idea and asked Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland to work on it with him. 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. The commercials were produced by Vinton Studios using their claymation technique, with character designs by Michael Brunsfeld. The California Raisins are often accompanied by a soundtrack of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," originally popularized by singer Marvin Gaye. And though the process is time-consuming and expensive, Werner's performance managed to win them over. Almost across the board, everyone I spoke to had good things to say about the ad itself. And so Will said 'well finally I took Janet's nose and put that on the raisin and he bought it [snaps fingers] like that.'. KB: [counts] 350 versus 244. He just wanted to make an ad he thought was cool. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal (Europe) S. r.l. SW: Within a month of its release, the album went gold. Select PayPal Credit to have the option to pay over time. Scrobbling is when Last.fm tracks the music you listen to and automatically adds it to your music profile. MICHAEL JACKSON: And Will, keep these guys still until they do the heard it! 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. And their arms were like small, and they had like little legs. 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. Michael Jackson asked to be featured in a sequel. There were California Raisins lunchboxes, then Hardee's started handing out plastic Raisins figurines with Cinnamon 'n' Raisin biscuits. Think you know music? He says if it had just been up to him, he would not have ended CALRAB and therefore the Dancing Raisins. If you have more stories to share, call us anytime. 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,'. Did it, uh, did it drive up the price of raisins? And he says, even though the Dancing Raisins are long gone, he and the rest of the industry are still dealing with the fallout. RV: I said, 'I'm going to do it where it feels authentic.' SW: Remember, these were Fresno guys, not big city ad men. KB: Whereas the packer is the middleman buying it from him, processing it, selling it, shipping it into trade and hoping to make a profit. [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. 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. Director. Their cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" peaked at #84 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. They recorded an album that went gold within weeks of its release. SW: This is Seth Werner. We apologize for the interruption. 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. This client had been with his agency for over a decade, and though they'd had some fairly successful campaigns in the past, the client's main product was slipping in sales. SW: That is exactly what I wanted to find out. SETH WERNER: It wasn't back then, and it still isn't now. [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. 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, 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 Heard It Through The Grapevine - California Raisins. It seems like everyone in Motown heard about this song "through the grapevine" before it was finally recorded. WERNER: Our whole objective was to make them cool. 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. Get instant explanation for any lyrics that hits you anywhere on the web! BK: It actually got to the point where the Dancing Raisins had their own television show. They weren't in the shelf. If you require a personal response, please use ourContact page. African American History Curatorial Collective. SW: Matthew says, whether or not the dancing raisins are part of the industry's future, he remains optimistic. On November 4, 1988, CBS aired a primetime television special called Meet the Raisins! Musicians such as Ray Charles and Michael Jackson even got in on the raisin action, singing their own versions of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" for later commercials. Or 'if it's bad for Sunmaid, it's gotta be good for them. He's written songs for bands like Earth, Wind and Fire, the Gap Band, and more recently, he's done covers with Kanye West. 2023. Heard it, heard it! More than 2 million people bought their albums and listened to the Raisins covering songs including "Lean on Me" and "You Cant Hurry Love." And that takes unity. SW: Yeah, I'm still looking for the pictures. Some people were saying they weren't getting a big enough slice of the Dancing Raisins pie. SW: This is Matthew Malcolm again. SW: The raisin industry quickly followed up with more ads. Not this time, however! Whod have ever thought that a beloved Motown classic would be brought back to life by a bunch of animated dried fruit? We may receive commission if your application for credit is successful, the commission does not affect the amount you will pay under your agreement. You're making us put up $32.50 for generic advertising, and Sunmaid's getting the benefit of it. So you really had to be in the right place at the right time just to see it, and then when you saw it, you weren't quite sure what that was, but it was different than everything else you saw, and people started just saying 'what was that?'. SPEAKER THREE: They sang we three kings with also these camels that were all claymation. SW: In the end, the ad went to air. 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?'. SW: The ad agency hired a guy named Will Vinton and his team to take the animated mockup of the ad and turn it into clay animationor, claymation. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online. Who'd have ever thought that a beloved Motown classic would be brought back to life by a bunch of animated dried fruit? Lead vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. A board member said, 'Seth, can you do it again?' "The Raisins opened up a floodgate everything had to be personified," Vinton told Food & Winelast year. Now, somebody just had to turn Seth Werner's concept into a real commercial. The California Dancing Raisins ad has been called one of the best of all time. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. HO: Well there's there's definitely 12:02 some discussion about that I mean in its infancy right now. AD ONE: Lay some happiness on me, give me raisins and I'll be. I grew up in California, and it felt like they were everywhere. Fresno is a dusty, medium-sized city in the middle of California's central valley. 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. To access our initial disclosure document, please click, Get the item you ordered or your money back. I voted to kill it too. Right? If you would like to know how we handle complaints, please click, . eBay (UK) Limited acts as a credit broker not a lender. Our collection database is a work in progress. RAISINS SHOW: You might have heard about us through the old grapevine. Entdecke The California Raisi - I Heard It Through The Grapevine - gebrauchtes Vinyl - E8100A in groer Auswahl Vergleichen Angebote und Preise Online kaufen bei eBay Kostenlose Lieferung fr viele Artikel! AD TWO: We know raisins are natural, but kids just know what they like. SARAH WYMAN: Charlie, I have to start with a confession. If you saw a commercial you liked, you couldn't look it up on YouTube and send a link to a friend. I mean, we didn't do anything short of that. Several California Raisins music albums were also released, featuring classic Motown and rock standards. You know how families can be about money. [14][additional citation(s) needed], On March 28, 1997 Entertainment Weekly published "The 50 Best Commercials of All Time" as its cover story. If you have any issues please contact me before leaving negative response I will always do my best make it right! They all watched as Seth walked in and took the floor. An article published by AnimateClay.com in the late 2000s details the whereabouts of the original claymation sculptures used by Vinton Studios. The problem, FCB's account supervisor said at the time, was that though customers understood the health benefits of raisins, they had emotional connections with various vice products, like cigarettes because of the long-running "Marlboro Man" ads, or beer based on the popular "Miller Time" ads. AD SEVEN: I heard it through the grapevine! Most of the time when we buy raisins, we have no idea where they came from. Playlist, Written by: Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, Lyrics Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Tratore. [6] However, the Raisins would continue to make their strongest impression through animated endeavors, and the characters proved popular enough that they were used to endorse Post Raisin Bran cereal. But there's one letter that really stands out: WERNER: Okay, this is from the Fitzgerald-Hartley Company. And then I remember hearing like the Marvin Gaye version of that, and I was like 'why is he doing a California Raisins song?' And then it clicked on me that it was like, 'oh, this is a real song, like not a California Raisins song.'. You asked someone to name a raisin brand, and they would say "Sunmaid.". And if the California raisin family wanted to avert economic disaster, it needed to band together and find a way to sell more raisins. Price: 16.01. And if you don't have a consensus, it doesn't matter. Between 1987 and 1988, the fictional band released four albums, two of which went platinum. Like that. Box Office Software produced a different, unrelated California Raisins computer game in 1988 for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and PC compatibles. Your email address will not be published. Lead vocals in the group were sung by musician Bu, The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. High-top sneakers, sunglasses, and endless swagger. Vintage California Raisins Posable, Puppets, Bank, Wind up toy. In 2018, an episode of The Americans called "Rififi" feature a cereal box featuring the California Raisins on the back. Oh I'm just about to lose my mind. The band broke up. 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. et Cie, S.C.A. It began to cost CALRAB too much to market the Raisins, and the public moved on. SW: But you know who was on that shelf? California Raisins Heard it Through the Grapevine (Better Quality) Herozilla Video Editing and Livestream Gaming 82.3K subscribers Subscribe 10K Share 983K views 3 years ago I don't own the. Somewhere, some afternoon, Noel Gallagher sat down with a guitar and did a little strumming and made up a few words to go with it. SUNMAID AD: My girl talkin' bout my girl. Music is from Audio Network. The game was completed and several video game critics reviewed it, but it was never released on the open market. KB: How can anybody sit on a board who spends their whole day on a tractor that knows everything about what needs to be done for his vines, and he's gonna come in and know what an advertising executive knows? Will pull out a calculator to prove it just wanted to make an ad thought... 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