There are so many different ways dried fruit suppliers have attempted to sell raisins, currents, and sultanas, from marketing them as a healthier snack, selling them as a trail mix with mixed nuts, wrapping them in chocolate and emphasising the sunshine that fuels the entire ecosystem.

However, for eight truly strange years, the most prominent marketing campaign involved a quartet of stop-motion raisins singing a cover version of Marvin Gaye’s 1968 hit I Heard It Through The Grapevine that somehow became a massive international sensation.

The initial pitch came about by accident, with every other idea by advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding falling flat until Seth Warner suggested having dancing raisins sing the Motown standard as a way to sell Sun-Maid branded raisins through the California Raisin Advisory Board.

Once the first adverts appeared on television, two surprising facts were learned; the first was that the adverts were astonishingly popular with the public in a way that absolutely nobody expected. The second was that the concept of raisins singing a song tangentially about grapes has a surprising level of versatility.

From having singers such as Ray Charles and Michael Jackson perform versions of the jingle to having the original raisins singing in every type of environment from lunchboxes to cinemas to surreal midnight snack sessions.

The mascots even escaped the raisin box, being used to advertise Raisin Bran cereal, libraries, performing hip-hop renditions of their signature tune and even releasing albums with a range of Motown staples on them.

There was even a Saturday morning cartoon series and two primetime television specials, a video game by Capcom that ultimately went unreleased, as well as an incalculable amount of merchandise.

It also inspired other advert campaigns such as Mac Tonight, which similarly blended food items with vintage music, however, both would ultimately be the victim of their own success.

Whilst the adverts were phenomenally successful, the production costs of them kept increasing to the point that it was costing growers twice their earnings. Ultimately, this led to CALRAB, who had produced and funded the adverts, folding, ending the era of The California Raisins.