Vintage 1988 California Raisins Band Poster - CALRAB Fresno Advertising Print with Recipes & Fan Club Offer 🖼️

Size: 21 x 15 inches ~ New old stock, never hung. They vary a little one to the next.

🎸 Remember When Raisins Had Their Own Rock Band?

I have sold a lot of strange, wonderful pieces of advertising over the years, and this one still makes me grin every time I unroll it. Somewhere in the late 1980s, a state raisin board out of Fresno - the heart of the only raisin country America has, since every raisin grown in the U.S. comes from within about 60 miles of that city - convinced America that dried grapes could headline a concert, and for a few years it actually worked. This poster is that band, caught mid-set: a full lineup of California Raisins up on striped stage risers, playing to a purple-and-gold sunset with two silhouetted palm trees standing guard on either side, and "The California Raisins" written across the top in that unmistakable script, tucked inside a big yellow sun.

Front and center you've got the whole group working the stage — one raisin down on an upright bass, another behind a full drum kit with its own head lettered "The California Raisins," a guitarist in a headband and round glasses leaning into an electric guitar, and three singers out front in heels — pink, green and yellow — one of them shaking a tambourine. It's a busy, joyful piece of artwork, and it still looks exactly like what it is: a marketing department having entirely too much fun.

🍇 Cook With Raisins, Then Join the Club

Flip it over and the tone changes completely — this was a working promotional sheet, not just a poster. The back is headed "COOK WITH RAISINS! GREAT RAISIN RECIPES!" and prints four full period recipes: Raisin Poppy Seed Cake, Raisin Oatmeal Cookies, Raisin Waldorf Salad with Ginger Honey Dressing, and New England Raisin Stuffing. Below that sits the part I like best: "If you're a real California Raisin Fan, join the club! THE OFFICIAL CALIFORNIA RAISIN FAN CLUB." For $5.95 and three proofs of purchase from any size or brand of California Raisins, a kid could mail off to Fan Club Headquarters in Fresno, California and get back a fan club watch "specially designed for fan club members only," a membership card with an official seal, a bumper sticker with dancing raisins on it, and a newsletter every three months. It's printed "The California Raisin Advisory Board" and dated "(c) 1988 California Raisin Advisory Board" right on the sheet — which is exactly how I can tell you this one dates to 1988, the year the whole phenomenon hit its stride.

🎤 Who Actually Built a Band Out of Fruit

The idea belongs to Seth Werner, a copywriter at the ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding, who is credited with the campaign's now-famous line: "We have tried everything but dancing raisins singing 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine.'" Somebody took that half-joke seriously, and Will Vinton Studios of Portland, Oregon brought the raisins to life in claymation, with the characters themselves designed by Michael Brunsfeld. Vinton already had an Academy Award on the shelf, for his 1974 clay short "Closed Mondays," and he'd trademarked the word Claymation in 1978; his studio later became Laika, the outfit behind "Coraline." The voice that made them sound like a real band belonged to Buddy Miles - the drummer and singer from Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, a founding member of the Electric Flag, and Carlos Santana's partner on a platinum live album in 1972 - and the group's cover of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" actually climbed to No. 84 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a startling thing for a raisin commercial to pull off. By the time this poster was printed, the group had four albums out between 1987 and 1988.

📺 1988: Raisins Everywhere

This was the year the California Raisins stopped being a commercial and became a full-blown entertainment property. The year before, "A Claymation Christmas Celebration" had won an Emmy, and 1988 brought "Meet the Raisins!," which aired on CBS in prime time on November 4, 1988 and picked up an Emmy nomination of its own. The characters even turned up as giveaway figures at Hardee's. A Saturday-morning cartoon followed in 1989 (thirteen episodes), and "The Raisins: Sold Out!" came along in 1990. The fan club this poster is advertising had launched the year before, in 1987, and by now had its own steady stream of newsletters and merchandise going out to members. Pieces from the whole phenomenon are now in the Smithsonian's permanent collection — not a bad résumé for a marketing gimmick that started as a joke about dried fruit.

📉 How the Party Ended

The story has an odd ending. The California Raisin Advisory Board — the growers' own marketing board, known as CALRAB — was the outfit behind all of this, and by 1994 the growers who funded it had had enough of what the campaign cost to run. CALRAB was dissolved on July 31, 1994. Just a few short years after this poster went out to raisin lovers everywhere, the band that had its own prime-time specials was gone. What's left is pieces like this one — the recipes, the fan club pitch, the whole sales-floor cheer of a state agricultural board convincing a nation that raisins needed their own rock band. I still think it's one of the better stories in advertising, and I'm glad to be able to pass this piece along.