Dancing Raisins to Return in New TV Ad

Those groovin’ California Raisins evidently have some movin’ left in them after all.

Rumors ran rampant last year that the fast-fading raisins had danced their last commercial dance. Not so, the California Raisin Advisory Board said Wednesday. In fact, the animated TV commercial characters who caught the public’s fancy four years ago will appear in a new TV spot scheduled to air Sunday.

“We never did abandon them,” said Clyde Nef, manager of the Fresno-based raisin board. “We know the raisins won’t dance forever, but they still have some life left in them.”

In the newest ad, the raisins don’t actually dance at all. Instead, a clay animated figure with the voice--and face--of character actor Carl Ballantine, plays a talent agent who tries to “book” the raisins into everything from salads to souffles. “We didn’t want to make salesmen out of the raisins themselves,” explained Veronica Kludjian, senior vice president at the San Francisco office of ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding.

Although Rodney Dangerfield was at one time hired to be the next talking raisin, the Raisin Board dropped him when it decided that the popular comedian might actually overpower the message.

Like most raisin ads from the past, this one includes the now-familiar raisin anthem, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

Is bringing back the raisins a good idea? “They’ve never come up with anything that grabs attention like this,” said Donald F. Bruzzone, president of Bruzzone Research Co., an Alameda, Calif., ad research firm. “There’s no evidence I know of that says it’s worn out.”