In the annals of advertising imagery, few brand symbols are more iconic and recognizable than the Sun-Maid raisin girl.
Nevertheless, Sun-Maid recently decided to join Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth’s in giving the female face of their product a substantial makeover from a young, early 20th-century girl into a buxom, modern young woman, leading some to say that the newly made-over raisin girl looks like a Barbie Doll in Amish attire.
Since 1915, the face of Sun-Maid has been Lorraine Collett Petersen, who, according to the company’s website , “was discovered drying her black hair curls in the sunny backyard of her parents’ home in Fresno, California.” Petersen was then asked to pose for a watercolor painting holding a basket of grapes while wearing a sunbonnet. In the years since, the company has tweaked its trademark design occasionally to keep up with the times, but every variation has always been based on the original pose by Petersen. The new computer-animated version of the Sun-Maid girl currently featured in television advertisements is a departure from the classic design that harkened back to a time when “life was much simpler, more rural, a lot less hectic.”
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