Musicians - The California Raisins

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	Musicians - The California Raisins

The California Raisins are a fictional rhythm and blues musical group made up of anthropomorphized raisins. Vocals were sung by musician Buddy Miles.

The concept was originally created for a 1987 commercial on behalf of the California Raisin Advisory Board when one of the writers, while trying to come up with an idea for a new raisin commercial, said, "We have tried everything but dancing raisins singing 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine'" (a 1968 Marvin Gaye song). To their surprise, the commercial became wildly popular, spawning future commercials, TV specials, and a Saturday morning cartoon series starring the Raisins. The Raisins also appeared in holiday specials such as A Claymation Christmas Celebration.

The California Raisins are normally 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.

The California Raisins reportedly grossed more in the year that was their heyday, 1988, than Californian farmers made selling raisins.

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 was never released on the open market.

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 depicted the Raisins as mass-murderers by promoting humans to eat their fans. After an 'incident' in Seattle, the band was sentenced to 'death by toaster'.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The California Raisins ]

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