We have really been treated to a lot of new Dukes items in 2013. The newest of the new is Auto World's new line of slot cars. Two of the four cars in the line are General Lees, the standard General as well as the black General from Happy Birthday General Lee. Along with the standard versions, there are two chase versions of each car. I took the leap and bought all of them together.
The standard General Lee is packaged in the same design we expect from all Dukes items these days. These cars are a part of the Silver Screen Machines line that also includes AW's 1/18 General Lee. The boxes are the same for both cars. One major difference though is that you can't actually see the standard General, just a picture of it. Raise your hand if you can tell me why. You guessed it, the black General Lee doesn't have a flag on top, so it doesn't need to be hidden. The regular General Lee has it's roof covered once again.
The outer boxes are the same for both cars. Pretty standard stuff.
Once you open the box for the General Lee, you see that the awkward looking cover surrounds the entire case that holds the car. We saw similar cases in past Auto World Dukes cars.
Like the past releases, these cars could be sold in just these cases. All in information is on them. But I'm glad AW made these stand out by including the hanging box.
After you take the sleeve off, you finally see the General Lee in all its beauty. They did a great job on the car, but it is incredibly similar to past releases.
The flag does fly on this car.
This is the way it should look, but I understand the reasoning behind the sleeve covering.
The Happy Birthday General Lee box has no sleeve.
Each car comes in a chase/variant version. The black car comes in an all silver version. It is the less rare of the two versions.
We also get an all white version called iWheels. It's similar to White Lightning, but this is AW not Johnny Lightning, so it has a different name. The car is white and also has white wheels. I don't know the distrubution numbers, but these things are extremely limited and very rare. I was lucky to get the white ones right off the bat.
The standard General variants include the flag, so they are covered with a sleeve too. I'm glad they show that the car inside is a variant so it wouldn't be a blind buy situation where you don't know if you have the rare one until you open it. This way is much easier on us crazy collectors.
The General Lee does look nice in chrome. I'll have to set this one up beside the chrome 1/18 diecast.
The iWheels General Lee is a treat. The Gen'ral really looks interesting painted all white. Just like the JL WL version in series 2 of that line, it resembles the Ghost of the General Lee.
The colorful flag against the white car really pops. AW even made the rim of the case white to show off the iWheels design. I wouldn't have noticed that if I had kept it in the box. I would love to have another scale of a car that looks just like this. Hmmm......
I like the addition of the Dodge logo where the license plate should go. A tiny CNH-320 doesn't always fit, so I'm glad they added something.
On top of the white car and white case, I noticed the inside mechanisms are also white. Very cool little touch.
The moving parts for the standard and silver versions are all black.
These three Generals look great in their different attires. I'm happy Auto World is showing Dukes love. They have a few other great releases coming in 1/18 scale soon. Keep 'em coming AW. The other two cars in AW Xtraction Release 13 are the Back to the Future Time Machine and Bandit's Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit. Great cars, but I didn't need to add them to the collection.
Another great year of blogs Larry. The work you put in is really appreciated by us Dukes collectors.
ReplyDeleteHappy Christmas to all fellow blog readers out there and here’s to another great year in 2014.
Thank you very much. That is very nice to say. Merry Christmas to you and everyone.
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