Sun-Maid

In 1873, Francis T. Eisen planted an experimental vineyard of Muscat grapes on 25 acres (10 hectares) along Fancher Creek, just east of Fresno. By 1878, packaged raisins were being shipped out of the state, and by 1903, California was producing 120 million pounds of raisins a year.

Packing houses quickly became a vital link between the grower and the consumer, and dozens sprouted up across the San Joaquin Valley. Employing hundreds of immigrant people, these facilities received the sun-dried raisins from growers, which they stored, processed, packaged, and shipped throughout the United States and to countries around the world. When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, farmers and immigrants from the East settled the area for the first time, and growers were able to quickly transport products from the West to new markets. In 1872, Leland Stanford brought the Central Pacific Railroad to the San Joaquin Valley, choosing a location in present-day downtown Fresno as the rail stop, Fresno Station. Depots in surrounding communities soon followed. As the railroads expanded, so too did the area surrounding Fresno Station, attracting farmers to grow agricultural products to satisfy the increasing demand from faraway markets. Many of the families suffered due to harmful chemicals that they were faced with while working on the farms.

Once raisins were established as a marketable crop which grew and dried well under the Californian sun, raisin grape-growing areas expanded rapidly in the late 19th century. The earliest successful efforts to form a cooperative business by raisin growers began in 1898. With community support, the California Associated Raisin Company was established in 1912. In 1915, the brand name Sun-Maid, coined by advertising executive E.A. Berg, was launched; and in 1918 the company opened a new facility near downtown Fresno, California.

By the early 1920s, the California Associated Raisin Company’s membership comprised 85 percent of the state’s raisin growers. The organization changed its name to Sun-Maid Growers of California in 1922 to identify more closely with its nationally recognized brand.

In 1964, further modernization and growth led to the construction of, and move to, a new facility in neighboring Kingsburg. The 640,000-square-foot (59,000-square-meter) facility sits on more than 100 acres (40 hectares), and is located 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Fresno. To this day, the Kingsburg plant serves as the international headquarters of Sun-Maid Growers of California, but the corporate headquarters is located in Fresno, California.

In 2012, Sun-Maid celebrated its 100th anniversary as a grower cooperative.

First package featuring Lorraine Collett (1916)

The original "Sun-Maid Girl" was a real person named Lorraine Collett. She attended the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco as one of several young girls representing the California Associated Raisin Company. The Sun-Maid girls promoted the raisin industry by handing out raisin samples to visitors of the Expo while wearing white blouses with blue piping and blue sunbonnets.

A photograph of Collett appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1915 and promoted Sun-Maid’s activities at the Exposition. While working at the Expo in San Francisco, Collett posed at the Post Street studio of artist Fanny Scafford in the morning, and then spent the rest of the day working the Expo, where the Sun-Maid girls were by then all wearing red bonnets. The artist experimented with a variety of positions and props, finally settling on the pose with an overflowing tray of grapes and a glowing sunburst in the background.

In May 1916, company executives agreed Collett would become the personification of the company. Her image with the sunbonnet and the tray of grapes was updated in 1956 and again in 1970, using drawings made a decade earlier of company employee Delia von Meyer (Pacheco).[1] Collett continued to make special appearances as the original Sun-Maid Girl until her death at the age of 90.

The current version was created in 1970 by John Lichtenwalner, a freelance commercial artist in San Francisco. Lichtenwalner, a graduate of Art Center in Los Angeles, used the previous versions of the Sun-Maid Girl to create a cleaner version of the character. The model for the updated portrait was a young actress/model, Liz Weide. The portrait was centered over a figurative sunburst. The artwork, sold as piecework to the Sun-Maid Raisin Co., has been reproduced internationally and is perhaps the artist's best-known work, unchanged for more than 40 years.

In 2006, the Sun-Maid Girl was animated for television commercials in which she walked and talked for the first time. The commercials were designed and produced by Synthespian Studios.

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  The California Associated Raisin Company begins using the “Sun-Maid” brand name and the painting of Lorraine Collett.
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  The original image of the Sun-Maid Girl is modified for the first time, giving her a bigger smile, brighter colors, and a stylized sun. This contemporary look was in style with the 1920s.
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  The trademark is updated for the second time. The sun was moved off-center, intensifying the effect of the sunshine with the bonnet casting a shadow across the Sun-Maid Girl’s face.
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  Brighter colors and a geometric sun modernizes the logo, with the brand’s name now printed in yellow, for a warmer, sunnier feel. This Sun-Maid Girl continues on packaging into the 21st century.

• Sun-Maid website