Vintage 1980s California Raisins Complete Set All 9 Tin Pins 📌

Size: 1.5 inches ~ They vary a little one to the next.

🍇 Remember When Raisins Could Dance?

I still catch myself humming it — that bassline hit, and a whole gang of clay raisins in sunglasses and sneakers would strut across the screen like they owned the place. If you were anywhere near a TV in the late '80s, you know exactly the feeling I mean. This is a complete set of nine California Raisins pinback buttons, each one its own little personality: a surfer riding a blue wave on a red board, a singer with a red microphone and a blue bow tie, a saxophone player, one in red sunglasses pointing skyward, another in red sunglasses pointing with both hands, one smiling and pointing up, one with a hand near its face, one with both gloved hands raised by its cheeks, and a tennis player in orange sunglasses with a racket and ball. Nine different poses, all from the same grinning cast.

📺 Where They Came From

The idea started as a pitch nobody was sure would work. Seth Werner, a copywriter at Foote, Cone & Belding's office in San Francisco, California, came up with dancing raisins set to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" — and the California Raisin Advisory Board, the growers' own promotion board, actually ran with it. The first thirty-second commercial aired September 14, 1986, and it turned a fruit nobody thought twice about into the thing everyone was talking about.

🎬 Claymation and the Cast Behind the Cast

Will Vinton's studio animated them frame by frame — the same Vinton who later trademarked the word "Claymation" itself. Michael Brunsfeld designed their now-iconic look, and Buddy Miles sang lead. The very first commercial, "Lunch Box," won a Clio Award, and "Late Show" took home the Lion d'Argent at Cannes. Not bad at all for an ad about dried fruit.

🍔 The Hardee's Years

Hardee's put them in kids' hands with molded California Raisins figurines in 1987, again in 1988, and once more in 1991. By then the Raisins had two television specials, Meet the Raisins and Raisins Sold Out, their own Saturday morning cartoon, The California Raisin Show, and a part in A Claymation Christmas Celebration, which went on to win an Emmy. There was even an album, The California Raisins Sing the Hit Songs. For a few years there, they were everywhere.

📉 The Twist Nobody Put on the Lunch Box

Here's the part the merchandise never told you: that first commercial actually worked — raisin sales rose about 20 percent after it aired. But running the whole campaign, the commercials, the specials, the licensing, cost the growers almost twice what it brought back in. The California Raisin Advisory Board closed its doors on July 31, 1994, after the farmers themselves balked at the fees. The characters didn't disappear, though — the rights passed to the State of California, and from 1998 on they were licensed out through the California Raisin Marketing Board. It's a genuinely bittersweet story: the ad worked, and it still wasn't enough to save the board that made it.

📌 What's In This Set

Nine round buttons, 1.5 inches each, on plain white grounds: the surfer, the singer, the saxophone player, the two in red sunglasses, the one smiling and pointing up, the one with a hand near its face, the one with both hands raised by its cheeks, and the tennis player. Flip one over and you'll find a metal face shell crimped over a white plastic back with a gold-tone safety pin, and no printing anywhere, front or back. Pin the whole set to a jacket, line them up on a shelf, whatever you like — they're still one of my favorite little relics of that whole raisin-shaped moment in advertising history, and I like knowing a piece of that story is going out the door with them.