Vintage 1950s Mr. Grape Crate Label 🍇 Mecca, CA, American Produce Icon!

Who Was Mr. Grape? 🍇 Vintage 1950s Crate Label, Mecca, CA

Size: 13" x 4"

🍇 A winking fellow with a moustache and a yellow cowboy hat, whose whole body is one big blue grape and whose arms and legs are little green grapes, holding up a bunch like he's showing off the crop. That's Mr. Grape, and the best part is that there really was a Mr. Grape. This label is from his packing house in Mecca, California, and it's never been on a box.

🔍 What's On It

On a deep navy ground: Mr. Grape in big yellow script with a red shadow, BRAND with the registered ® under it, and PRODUCE OF U.S.A. up top. A red ribbon banner reads RICHARD BAGDASARIAN INC., PACKER • SHIPPER • DISTRIBUTOR, MECCA, CALIFORNIA, and in tiny white letters along the bottom, the printer: LITHO. IN U.S.A.—WESTERN LITHO. CO., LOS ANGELES. The grape man stands on a green mound with three big grape leaves behind him. The back is blank.

🤠 Dick Bagdasarian, "Mr. Grape"

Richard Sirak Bagdasarian was born in Fresno in 1910 to a grape-growing family; his mother was a Saroyan, and the writer William Saroyan was his cousin. He came down to the Coachella Valley in the 1940s, and by the 1950s the desert papers just called him "Mr. Grape." When he died in 1966, his obituary said he was "known as 'Mr. Grape' because of his prominence in the industry." He owned grape and date ranches east of Thermal and the packing plant in Mecca, and he was president of the Coachella Valley Grape League.

He was a showman about it, too. In June 1952 he sold the much-argued-over Perlette grapes on the New York market for better than $15 a lug. The next June the first carload of California grapes to reach New York carried his Perlettes and a new black seedless called Beauty Seedless that only he grew, and the paper noted he "ships under the Mr. Grape label." In 1955 he showed off a duster he'd built onto a trailer behind a jeep that could cover 100 acres in an evening, and in 1957 he built a big new packing shed at Mecca and threw a barbecue there for a busload of guests.

And here's the part I love: his kid brother was Ross Bagdasarian, who as David Seville created Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ross and cousin Bill Saroyan wrote "Come On-a My House" back in 1939, and Ross even tried grape growing himself before he moved to Los Angeles and the music took off.

🍇 The Brand

Mr. Grape was first used on June 8, 1952, and registered as a federal trademark on August 18, 1953, by Richard Bagdasarian & Co. of Thermal. The drawing on file is this same grape man. The ® on this label means it was printed after that registration. The same character shows up in a turban for the company's Pasha brand, first used the very same day in 1952, and later Bagdad, names that fit right in around Mecca.

The company was incorporated in 1952. After Dick died, his bookkeeper and partner, Lucille Tidwell, became the owner, her son-in-law Mike Bozick helped her run it, and her grandson Nick Bozick later became president, all under the Bagdasarian name.

🌴 Mecca, California

Mecca sits about 150 feet below sea level near the Salton Sea in Riverside County. It started out as Walters, a Southern Pacific stop, and when artesian wells and date palms came to the lower Coachella Valley, Arabian names came into style and the town became Mecca in the early 1900s. And local legend tells of the Lost Ship of the Desert, an old Spanish galleon said to have been seen beached near Salt Creek, south of town, after the flood of 1862.

The printer, Western Lithograph Co. of Los Angeles, was bought by Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul in 1953 but kept printing under its own name in Los Angeles for years after.

📏 Details

• Vintage 1950s Mr. Grape Brand crate label, Richard Bagdasarian Inc., Mecca, California
• Western Litho. Co., Los Angeles; registered ® mark
• About 13" x 4", unused, New Old Stock
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ It's a fun one over a kitchen doorway or a wine bar, and a great gift for anybody from the Coachella Valley or any Chipmunks fan who'd like a little family history.