Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey: 20-Foot-Tall California Raisin

He looks like he's been given a paint job and a new hat. The gelati was amazing.

Unfortunately, this raisin isn't looking too good these days. It's always sad to see something deteriorated. The nostalgia was almost there, but this Raisin might need to be retired.

As a pop culture phenomenon, the California Raisins peaked in the late 1980s. One of their fans lived in New Jersey (some 3,000 miles from California) and -- according to local lore -- built a 20-foot-tall Raisin for his miniature golf course on the Wildwood boardwalk. But fame is fleeting. The Raisins' popularity waned, and the golf course went out of business in the early 1990s.

The mini-golf Raisin, however, had a fan in Richard Little. He rescued the wrinkly icon, trucked it up the coast and several miles inland, and stood it in the front yard of his house, next to his ice cream stand. People seemed not to mind that it had nothing to do with ice cream. In fact, customers gradually stopped referring to the business as Little's Dairy Bar. They called it (and still do) "The Raisin."

Richard Little's daughter and son-in-law took over the business in the late 1990s. They created an ice cream cone for the Raisin to hold, but its presence is still pretty puzzling.