The California Raisins

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For other uses, see The California Raisins (disambiguation).
One of the Califorinia Raisins albums

The California Raisins were a fictional rhythm and blues musical group composed of anthropomorphized raisins. Lead vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles.[1]

The concept was originally created for a 1986 commercial on behalf of the California Raisin Advisory Board when one of the writers (Seth Werner of the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding) came up with an idea for the new raisin commercial, saying "We have tried everything but dancing raisins singing 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine'" (the 1968 Marvin Gaye song). To their surprise, the commercial became wildly popular, spawning future commercials, two TV specials (Meet the Raisins in 1988 and Raisins: Sold Out! in 1990), four studio albums, and a Saturday morning cartoon series, aptly titled The California Raisin Show. The Raisins also appeared in A Claymation Christmas Celebration in 1987, singing the classic Christmas carol, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." The Raisins ultimately gained individual names: A.C., Beebop (drums), Stretch (bass), and Red (piano).

The California Raisins are typically depicted in claymation designed by the Emmy-Award winning studio of Will Vinton, but their cartoon series was cel animated. The artist responsible for the original design was Michael Brunsfeld.

Merchandise sales included a wide variety, from toys to Raisins images on every conceivable medium: lunch boxes, notebooks, clothing, posters, etc. A California Raisins music album was also released, featuring classic Motown and rock 'n' roll standards. But perhaps one of the most memorable pieces of merchandise came in the form of small, non-poseable California Raisins figures. The Hardee's restaurant chain offered these as part of a promotion for their cinnamon raisin biscuits. Different collections were produced in 1987, 1988, 1991, and finally in 2001 for their new stylization. This latest incarnation can still be seen on the California Raisin Marketing Board website.[2]

In the early 1990s, Capcom produced a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System titled California Raisins: The Grape Escape, where the player controlled a California Raisin through five side-scrolling levels battling various evil fruit and vegetable characters that had stolen the Raisins' music. The game was finished, and several video game critics reviewed it, but The Grape Escape was never released on the open market.

Contents

[edit] All that remains

An article on Animateclay.com [1] sheds light on the current status of some of the original clay puppets used in the TV special, Raisins Sold Out. As stated on the site, they were received by Webster Colcord, a former employee of Will Vinton Studios. The figures were kept in a box for several years and headed for the trash before being obtained by Colcord. Several photos are shown on the website, detailing the Raisins' poor condition and taking a close look at their internal armatures.

To clarify things: The original concept for the Dancing Raisins was created by Seth Warner with his art director partner Dextor Fedor who is now a film producer with Disney. Warner and Fedor created the first two Dancing Raisins TV commercials- which may be the best two - and then left in the wake of their success to accept bigger jobs elsewhere. The remaining series of Dancing Raisins TV commercials, including versions featuring Ray Charles and Michael Jackson, were created by Florence Babbitt, Jose Tapia, Tim Price, Andrea Janetos-Hyatt and others. At one point Babbitt and Price fired Will Vinton Studios and then later rehired them. Vinton's offense was in repeatedly insinuating in national publications that he had created the Dancing Raisins which was untrue. Vinton did create the Dancing Raisins TV shows, but Warner and Fedor came up with the original idea.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Parodies

In The Simpsons episode, "'Tis The Fifteenth Season," the California raisins were spoofed as "The California Prunes" in a Christmas special depicting the Nativity. Lisa dismisses it as "offensive to both Christians and prunes."

A segment on MADtv titled "Investigative Raisin Reports" depicted the Hollywood Raisins (An obvious parody of The California Raisins), consisting of Captain Chewy, Sunshine, Mort, and Dexter, as a major hit rock band that started off as a struggling raisin skittle group in Prissno called "The Wrinkles," but were soon revealed to be a group of mass-murderers by promoting humans to eat their fans, after signing a contract with "Helloggs--The Country's Largest Human Cereal Company" (A parody of Kelloggs) to make the mass eating of raisins even more popular than before in the lives of humans and to earn millions of dollars and to be spared from being eaten by humans in exchange for millions of their own raisin people to become victims of a cereal similar to Raisin Bran. Indeed, the beginning of the entire segment states that the Hollywood Raisins were worse than The three most dangerous convicts in the raisin world: Charles Man Sunmaid and his Sue-ten-nick bunch, John Wave Gravy The Clown Killer, and "New York's Favorite" Grape-o-wits: the Sun of Chan. Afterward, The Hollywood Raisins enjoyed "The Sun Bake Safe Life," a party that consisted of Sex, Drugs, And Rock And Roll, "that lasted for two years" until they were finally brought to justice by the Raisin Police Force. While on trial, it was revealed that an estimate of "20 Bazillion raisins" were eaten because of the Hollywood Raisins' teamwork with Helloggs. After a clip showing the 'incident' in the Seattle Superdome of 1993, where The Hollywood Raisins call upon a human to scoop up a large proportion of their own raisin audience while playing a song similar to "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (A Major hit song made famous for the entire California Raisins Franchise) as a form of a distraction/trap, plays, the Hollywood Raisins, as punishment "for condemning their brothers to a fiber rich milky grave with orange juice to make it a complete breakfast", were sentenced to 'death by toaster'.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ "Buddy Miles, Hendrix Drummer, Dies", by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, February 28, 2008
  2. ^ CalRaisins.org

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_California_Raisins"
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