Vintage 1980s Dancing California Raisin Tin Pin 📌 WOW The Memories!

Remember the Dancing California Raisins? 🍇 The Dancing California Raisin Tin Pin, 1980s

Size: 1 1/2"

Vintage Dancing California Raisin Tin Pin, WOW The Memories! One of the Raisins is striking a pose on a cream background: red sunglasses, big white cartoon gloves, red-and-white high-top sneakers, one finger pointed at the ceiling and the other hand pointed at the floor. If you can look at him without hearing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" in your head, you're doing better than me.

I need to just say WOW again because when I saw these the memories came flooding back and I went to youtube and watched every single Raisin video ever. And let me add nothing is better than listening to a song sung by a California Raisin!

It's a round tin pin with the picture printed right on the metal. The back is painted cream, with a gold-tone safety pin held on by two little metal tabs. The last photo shows three pin backs next to a quarter so you can see the size.

🎤 Meet the Band

California Raisins were given individual names and characterizations: A.C. Arborman (vocals), his younger brother Beebop Arborman (drums), their cousin Red Raisin (guitar/piano), and their friend Stamford "Stretch" Thompson (bass). They got those names in Meet the Raisins!, a primetime CBS special that aired on November 4, 1988 and was nominated for an Emmy.

📺 How a Box of Raisins Became a Motown Act

The California Raisins were invented in 1986 and seem to pop up and do events and cameos over the years unbeknownst to me. I've been missing out! I have seen some people say these pins are from the 1970s but it isn't possible. I obviously went and read up on them too, and here's what I found.

The idea came out of the San Francisco office of the ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding, working for the California Raisin Advisory Board, when one of the writers, Seth Werner, joked that they had "tried everything but dancing raisins singing 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine.'" That was the 1968 song made famous by Marvin Gaye and by Gladys Knight & the Pips. Will Vinton's studio brought the raisins to life in clay, with characters designed by Michael Brunsfeld, and the first 30-second commercial cost $300,000 to develop and test. Nobody expected what happened next. The spot was a smash, and the drummer and singer Buddy Miles became the Raisins' lead voice.

In 1987 they sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the Emmy-winning A Claymation Christmas Celebration. They put out four albums in 1987 and 1988, and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" made the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 84. A fan club started in 1987 with its own newsletter, the Grapevine Gazette. Hardee's gave away little Raisin figures with its Cinnamon 'N' Raisin biscuits in 1987, 1988 and 1991, the Raisins sold Post Raisin Bran, and CBS gave them a Saturday morning cartoon, The California Raisin Show, in 1989. Their faces went on lunch boxes, notebooks, posters, bedsheets and just about anything else you could print on.

The ride ended on July 31, 1994, when the California Raisin Advisory Board collapsed. Growers were fed up with the fees that paid for all those commercials. The Raisins' trademarks and copyrights went to the State of California, which has licensed them since 1998 to the new California Raisin Marketing Board. The original clay puppets had a close call too. They sat in a box for years and were headed for the trash before a former Vinton animator, Webster Colcord, rescued them.

These are so highly collectible that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History put the California Raisins in its permanent collection, from Vinton's pencil sketches, clay figures and armatures to a Raisins T-shirt and a School Friends collector album. Here is a piece for you that the Smithsonian I am sure would be proud of!

📦 Where These Came From

Please note the supply that was found of these were in a warehouse all just in big boxes all together for 40 years~ then moved so some might have a mark or blemish. Most who have these list them as new but as you know if you follow me I am meticulous about the condition.

The nostalgia for these isn't going to go away any time soon, so this is a great opportunity to display it as decor or wear it for fun. Pin it on a jean jacket, a lunch box or a cork board, or give it to anybody who ever danced along to the Raisins on TV.