But, that's not where this story ends. 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 . Logistics aside, there is a hint of the dancing raisins magic in the air again. Because the smaller packers still thought Sunmaid had an unfair advantage. WERNER: We still thought it was cool. Free shipping for many products! RV: I said, 'I'm going to do it where it feels authentic.' A new version of Last.fm is available, to keep everything running smoothly, please reload the site. KB: [counts] 350 versus 244. So, CALRAB proposed this big advertising campaign, with national TV commercials. 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. [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. AD SIX: Oh, I heard it through the grapevine! RV: I said, 'I think that's a great idea.' 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,'. Potato head, but a raisin. ", In 2017, an episode of The Simpsons called "The Cad and the Hat" included a couch gag segment featuring the California Raisins being killed by Homer.[21]. SW: One of the people who saw that ad was Michael Jackson. Heard it, heard it! You asked someone to name a raisin brand, and they would say "Sunmaid.". We apologize for the interruption. 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. Vinton and his team hired human dancers to make the Raisins's dance moves look realistic. I said, 'Ok, that's one piece of the marketing puzzle. All Rights Reserved. Of all the acronyms, there's just one you need to remember: CALRAB. [6] SW: For the packers who did have their own brands and worried Sunmaid was running away with raisin sales, there was another issue. Needless to say, their band history borrowed heavily from the types of origin stories real bands tended to have. SW: Within a month of its release, the album went gold. Whod have ever thought that a beloved Motown classic would be brought back to life by a bunch of animated dried fruit? Like, growing up, we had this little figurine in our doll house, and my parents dressed up as them one year for Halloween. Jun 1, 2013 - Explore The Goodwill Geek's board "Heard it Through the Grapevine.", followed by 362 people on Pinterest. HO: Well there's there's definitely 12:02 some discussion about that I mean in its infancy right now. It's that simple. SW: Again, Seth Werner, sockless ad copywriter. 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. We may update this record based on further research and review. In 2018, an episode of The Americans called "Rififi" feature a cereal box featuring the California Raisins on the back. Seth Werner and CALRABthe agency responsible for hyping up California raisinsthey had delivered a hit. [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. The California Dancing Raisins ad has been called one of the best of all time. Their cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" peaked at #84 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. SW: Yeah, that did not go over well within the industry. California Raisins T-shirt ~ I Heard It Through The Grapevine ~ Claymation 80s. The mockumentary-style show created a full backstory about the bands rise to stardom and delved into the histories of each of the individual Raisins, who had names by this pointA.C., Beebop, Stretch, and Red. RAISINS SHOW: You might have heard about us through the old grapevine. Sarah Wyman is our showrunner. A California Raisins Fan Club began in 1987, which included a Grapevine Gazette newsletter and various memorabilia. Lots of brands tested the limits of this rule, including Sunmaid: BK: I got permission from the manager to create a claymation ad where I had the Dancing Raisins singing to the Sunmaid girl. More than 2 million people bought their albums and listened to the Raisins covering songs including "Lean on Me" and "You Cant Hurry Love." CALRAB and the commercials it paid for represented the entire industry. The briefthe goal of the campaignwas to come up with a commercial that would make customers see raisins differently. 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. Seth Werner, the young copywriter newly in charge of the California Raisins account, had a concept. SW: Kalem Barserian, raisin industry veteran, again. 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. The 1980's TV commercials for California raisins have been called some of the best ads ever made. He says if it had just been up to him, he would not have ended CALRAB and therefore the Dancing Raisins. They needed to be the life of the snack bar. Lead vocals in the group were sung by musician Buddy Miles. It's a tax. See terms. See more ideas about california raisins, raisin, grape vines. Not much longer would you be mine baby. While todays commercials may depict M&Ms and cookies with unique personas, the California Raisins hold a special place as '80s pop culture icons. BARRY KRIEBEL: Well that's the problem with the advertising! And so he says, 'Ok fine. And that might be part of why some raisin packers felt like this all boiled down to: "it's us versus Sunmaid.". 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. 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. People loved the singing, dancing Claymation raisins so much that more commercials followed, andin a marketing scheme that was virtually unheard of at the timeThe California Raisins went on to release four albums, score a Billboard Hot 100 hit, and earn an Emmy nomination (and appear in an Emmy-winning show). Earlier this year, the CRMBwhich did not respond to my request for commenthired a brand new Vice President of Marketing. 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. It wasn't true. SW: Yeah, I'm still looking for the pictures. Note: This transcript may contain errors. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. They even earned an Emmy nomination! A sequel to the original CBS special aired in 1990 under the title The Raisins: Sold Out! SW: Buddy Miles, who'd been the drummer for Band of Gypsies with Jimi Hendrix, flew to California to record the vocals in Ross's studio. Not much longer would you be mine. While the songs popularized the phrase, they inspired the hit kids cartoon series "The California Raisins" in the 1990s. But in 1994, the. In the early 1990s, Capcom produced a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) titled The California Raisins: The Grape Escape,[12] in which the player controlled a California Raisin through five side-scrolling levels battling various evil fruit and vegetable characters that have stolen the Raisins' music. 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! 84 on the Billboard Hot 100. 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. Brought to you by is a production of Insider Audio. Scrobble, find and rediscover music with a Last.fm account, Do you know any background info about this track? But there was enough leadership to sway the ones that weren't smart enough to realize what a good program it was. (of Suite D2 Josephs Well, Hanover Walk, Leeds LS3 1AB) which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (with firm reference number 626349). Socit en Commandite par Actions Registered Office: 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg). "Picture cover". Oh I heard it through the grapevine. SW: So are the California Raisins coming back, do you thinkthe Dancing California Raisins? The industry is in talks about a new campaign to promote California raisins. Bill Moss is our sound engineer. Because, in Fresno, California Raisins has always meant something bigger than a couple of claymation figurines singing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine.". SW: They pulled up to a business park, hopped out of the car, and marched into a conference room. 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?' From Performing Songwriter Issue 111, July/Aug 2008. Between 12th and 14th Streets Please take time to look at pictures I try and show condition clear as possible. SW: Matthew says, whether or not the dancing raisins are part of the industry's future, he remains optimistic. Please take time to look at pictures I try and show condition clear as possible. I heard it through the grapevine. It lost message. SPEAKER FOUR: My mother thought they were great, and she collected the figurines. Refresh your browser window to try again. You're making us put up $32.50 for generic advertising, and Sunmaid's getting the benefit of it. It's very successful in that sense. [4] To their surprise, the commercial became wildly popular, paving the way for several future commercials and opportunities through other media. 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. SW: When the Dancing Raisins ad stopped airing, Sunmaid's share of direct raisin saleslike in boxes on grocery store shelvesactually increased. AD THREE: Raisins from California. ', SW: Barry Kriebel was president of Sunmaid at the time. Right or wrong, It depends on wherever the votes are. 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. There it is. SW: This process, as you can imagine, took a while. In order to be successful, this big "family" has to work together. AD ONE: Lay some happiness on me, give me raisins and I'll be. SW: Let me explain. (laughs) That's just the way it is. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions. Kalem Barserian will tell you the ad made the raisin industry money, and he will pull out a calculator to prove it. SPEAKER ONE: It was like a Mr. 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. 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. The growers are the ones with the vines. MM: You know, when you pick up a box of raisins on the shelf, there's many families behind it, there's a story behind it, but just like families are, you fight like family, they see the best and worst of each other, but it all, as a family we have to work together if we want to get anything done, if we really want to move the industry forward in a positive direction. Because that's a whole market supply and demand on both the national and international basis. VINTAGE THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS 1987 YELLOW PLASTIC LUNCHBOX WITH THERMOS, California Raisins Trumpet Figure 1988 Applause Calrab 80s PVC Vintage, CALIFORNIA RAISINS RUDY BAGAMAN, BANANA WHITE & LICK BROCCOLI FIGURES (JES33). CH: So where did this journey for you begin? CEO of the wine bargaining association for five years. He watched the original commercial spin off into more and more distant territory. "We decided that we wanted the raisins to be cool and a bit intimidating," Werner said. If you have a question relating to the museum's collections, please first check our Collections FAQ. 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. Director. They filed a petition, and that's it! 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 eyebrows, stylish shoes, and the slickest dance moves since the Chiquita Banana shimmied into advertising in the 1940s. He's a reporter covering raisins and grapes for one of the trade magazines his family publishes. 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. 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. The success of the dancing raisins exposed fractures in the industry which had been forming just under the surface for decades. Harry Overly became the new president of Sunmaid in 2017. SW: Lots of details would have to be worked out first. So, growers and packers paid a tax on every ton of raisins they produced. They were the California Raisins. HARRY OVERLY: I know for a fact that there is animosity that still exists within the industry of what happened back then. These days, some growers are abandoning ship entirely, ripping out their vineyards and planting almonds instead. Demand was down. How could this ad that on its surface seems like an unmitigated success also have caused all these other problems? 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. SPEAKER EIGHT: And I guess subliminally, it probably worked because I do remember eating raisins as a snack. Honey, honey yeah. The California Raisins were a fictional R&B group created in the mid-1980s for a commercial produced by the California Raisin Advisory. 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. Now, somebody just had to turn Seth Werner's concept into a real commercial. 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. BK: So the bottom line was you didn't have industry consensus. Like, who was allowed to borrow the actual dancing raisins costume CALRAB had? Werner's big idea was going to be a risk, especially without the celebrity spokesperson the client had requested. SW: I was not even alive when most of those ads aired, and I had the same experience. If you require a personal response, please use ourContact page. Your email address will not be published. Or, as they saw it, for Sunmaid's good. Sheet Music 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. 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. They recorded an album that went gold within weeks of its release. You're over. Raisins are not like cell phone brands, with unique features and better WiFi connectivity and a sleeker feel than their competitors. California raisins from the California vineyards. If you have any issues please contact me before leaving negative response I will always do my best make it right! SW: This is Seth Werner. ', 'Today during Ryan's Hope I saw the cutest commercial. It would go on to produce the Dancing Raisins ad. I was in the room when it got killed! Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform. And Seth Seth was dancing all by himself in front of the group, without socks on! Music is from Audio Network. Vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles. These days, some growers are abandoning ship entirely, ripping out their and. Grocery store shelvesactually increased ones that were n't smart enough to realize what good! Background info about california raisins heard it through the grapevine track about us through the old grapevine n't smart to. Of PayPal ( Europe ) S. r.l is provided by PayPal Credit a... 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california raisins heard it through the grapevine