Two Men, One Idea, and a Snack Industry Shaken to Its Roots

In 1979, Bob Stagi and Mike Scriven did something almost nobody in the snack industry thought worth doing: they took the sunflower seed seriously. Working out of Lodi and Stockton in California's Central Valley, the pair launched Stagi & Scriven Jumbo Sunflower Seeds — and the reaction from the industry was mild amusement. The reaction from American snackers was something else entirely.

The seeds were bigger than anything on the shelf. Fire-roasted with restraint — light on salt, enormous on flavor. Fans of the brand would later say it was the first sunflower seed that tasted like something worth eating.

The Stagi & Scriven era ran for over a decade and left a permanent stamp on California snack culture — and on America's dugouts.

Klein Brothers, Ltd. had been growing with California agriculture since 1917 — four generations of a family that built an empire spanning bean trading, almonds, walnuts, a ski resort, and even a winery. When Klein Bros. acquired the Jumbo brand, they brought the same soil-level philosophy: grow it right or don't grow it at all.

Under the Klein Bros. Snack & Packaged Nut Division in Stockton, the Jumbo name carried on — "Grown Bigger to Taste Better" — with private label and co-packing alongside Arroyo Seco Nuts.

Sometime in the 1980s, Jumbo sunflower seeds became baseball's open secret. Players discovered them as something to do between pitches — hands, mouths, nervous energy all occupied. The seeds landed in dugouts from the minors to the majors and never left.

Stagi & Scriven leaned in. In 1990 they launched an official baseball card insert set — 24 cards, tucked two or three per bag — explicitly positioning seeds as the healthy alternative to chewing tobacco in the dugout. The biggest names in the sport were on those cards.

The campaign worked. The tradition stuck. To this day, a bag of sunflower seeds in the dugout is as natural as chalk on a base path.

In August 2019, World Food Products — a Central California family company, growers of almonds and walnuts for four generations — took the wheel. New ownership meant new ambition: seeds actually as big as the name promised, and flavors bold enough to be unforgettable.

BBQ, Cracked Pepper, Wild Ranch, Sweet Chipotle. The original fire-roasted recipe, still light on sodium. The new team moved fast without breaking what made Jumbo worth keeping in the first place.