Raisins Shuffle Off Television Screen in Change of Agencies

The award-winning animated raisins that danced into the hearts of American television viewers for four years have shriveled on the vine.

They’re being replaced by a clay version of a 30-year-old sitcom character--Gruber of “McHale’s Navy”--as the California Raisin Advisory Board moves its advertising to a new studio.

The board has dropped Will Vinton Productions Inc. of Portland, Ore., as its commercial producer. It was replaced by Sculptoons of San Francisco, owned by former Vinton animator Tom Gasek and Elizabeth Buttler.

Vinton, who came up with the Claymation clay-animation process in the 1970s and won an Oscar for the 1975 animated short film “Closed Mondays,” had produced seven raisin commercials in the last four years.

The first spot’s line of raisins dancing to “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” proved so popular, others followed with raisin facsimiles of Ray Charles and Michael Jackson. There were TV specials, cartoons and California Raisin merchandise as well.

Louise Ure, who handles the raisin account for Foote, Cone & Belding, a San Francisco advertising agency, said it was the decision of the raisin board to change animation studios. “There are some slightly different things we wanted to try,” she said.

The new agency’s commercial is set to air in November.