California Raisins
maybe this is crazy, but were the California Raisins invented to counteract a grape boycott?
over the years california grapes suffered 3 boycotts: The first ran from 1967 to 1970, and ended when growers signed their first contracts with the United Farm Workers. The second grape boycott began in 1973 and received more widespread support than the recent one (with a 1975 Harris poll indicating that 17 million Americans were boycotting grapes). This boycott ended two years later, after the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was passed, allowing farmworkers to organize and bargain for contracts. in 1984 UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez called for a third boycott, as a way of focusing on the spraying of dangerous pesticides, and although UFW called the boycott successful, it lasted for 16 years (!) until november 2000, far less wham bam than previous efforts.
So the California Raisins were unleashed on the world in 1987, 3 years after the start of the last boycott, and were, duh, super successful, spawning a cartoon show, toys, live shows, all kinds of bullshit. even as a kid i always wondered why they even existed– i never saw an ad for bananas, for example. so is this why they made the ads? are the California Raisins like, scabs? i mean, outside of the fact that they look like huge scabs? does anyone have the numbers on california table grapes sold from 1984 - 1987? this coul dbe a good term paper for someone (someone that would subsequently owe me something for the idea, possibly fair trade organic chocolate bars, possibly lots of them).
also, buddy miles was the voice of one of the raisins, you may know him as the annoying guy on that band of gypsy record. what’s up with that?
anyway, we have this historical statue, it’s, i don’t know, $4.
oh, and sorry about all the capitalization weirdness, i obviously copied the statistics from another webpage (here).
ok, i just remembered that i have seen ads for bananas. or at least, i’m aware of a successful cartoon spokesperson for bananas. but nothing for apples, plums, dried apricots, etc. OK?
my uneducated guess would be, Yes. get the labor & media historians on it! I always wondered about the cali. raisins as well, except I think it took me longer to understand that they were actually an advertisement for something, since I was such an un-mediated little kid. I half-remember a moment of realization: “wait, those are actually supposed to be raisins? like the raisins that you eat in your oatmeal? I thought they were just toys!” (and toys that look like pudgy scabs, to boot.) for a embarrassingly long time, I also thought that they originated “I heard it through the grapevine”. oh well. there are worse things than growing up w/ no TV.
(currently eating a piece of an organic fair trade chocolate bar… don’t worry, we’re coming back to worcester today, if you come & track me & LA down we will share it with you!)
sorry for double comment:
“get the labor & media historians on it” :: where is Night Train when you need him?
“pudgy scabs” is the cool new urban vinyl figurette line from HBML. no joke. watch for it next week SUCKA.
I have a pretty strong stomach, but Pudgy Scabs really made it turn… good job!
Your store looks rad.
thanks! do you identify as punk?