Q. Both my wife and I remember seeing an animated Christmas movie that featured all sorts of animals made with "raisins." It was quite a long time ago (about 20 to 25 years ago). We both thought the movie was going to be a classic, but it obviously hasn't been. Do you know the name of this movie and if it's available anywhere?

A. So wait, a Christmas special starring shriveled grapes didn't become a classic? Hard to believe!

If you're older than 25, you know that we're talking about not just any shriveled grapes, but The California Raisins, those Motown-warbling gobs of dried fruit who were the subject of a blue jillion TV commercials in the late 1980s.

This is because it was thought that the best way to sell raisins was to turn them into agricultural versions of The Temptations. (Hey, it was a tough time to be old-school rhythm and blues — Ray Charles was making his money singing in commercials for Diet Pepsi and Maxwell House coffee.)

Anyway, the commercials featured not real raisins but clay versions of raisins, filmed in a process called "claymation." Sure enough, in 1987 we were visited upon by "A Claymation Christmas Special," featuring singing raisins as well as dancing dinosaurs and other animated objects made of naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals.

Oh — and it's on video and DVD.