Jaycees Dukes of Hazzard Pins - I Got Them All!

I did it!  I tracked them all down!  I got every Dukes of Hazzard Jaycees Pin from 1982 and 1983!  I'm so excited! 

Let's review.  A few months ago I started a new obsession when I bought 13 Dukes pins that I really didn't know anything about.  Once I got them, I fell down a rabbit hole exploring the history of the Jaycees, also known as the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce.  State chapters of the Jaycees produced pins each year for their convention that were meant to be traded to promote interaction with members.  Trading pins made it easier to make new friends.  The Jaycees have been making pins for decades and each state created pins that represented their area that year.  In '82 and '83 Georgia made Dukes pins because everyone loved the Dukes.  Iowa also got in the Dukes fun in '82.  I spoke with Jaycees experts and learned a lot about the organization and about this pins.  

Check out my first post on the Jaycees Dukes of Hazzard pins

Something fun that came from that post was an anonymous comment which enlightened me as to why Iowa made Dukes pins.  Ken Behrens was the Administrative Vice President of the Iowa Jaycees in 1981-1982 and the President in 1982-1983.  He fashioned himself to be very much like Jefferson Davis Hogg and even took the nickname Boss Hogg.  He was responsible for the Dukes Iowa pins.  That's great info.  I really love the comments I get on the blog, but please don't be anonymous, reach out so we can interact.  I'd love to know who posted that and wish that we could talk more about it.  

Ok, back to the new pins.  

 

Thanks to help of two collectors, I completed the set and now have all twenty-one Jaycees Dukes of Hazzard pins.  Almost immediately after posting my first pins article, a collector named Kevin reached out to me.  Kevin has been in the Jaycees pin trading world for a long time and wanted to help me complete the collection.  He had a couple of pins I needed and had many contacts to other collectors.  Kevin worked very hard to track down several pins and I'm so grateful.  He also helped me get a few non-Dukes pins that I'll talk about toward the end of this post.  Kevin helped me find all but four of the pins I needed.  Once I got the pins from Kevin in, and I was down to the final four, I reached out to another Dukes collector named Sandra who happened to have the four I needed.  Everything worked out perfectly and I tracked down all the pins.  I made a new friend in Sandra and look forward to talking Dukes with her in the future.  Thanks so much Kevin and Sandra!

 

The first pin in this post seems to be the last pin in the Georgia set.  This is the 1983 minor trading pin called the It's Time General Lee.  The text on the pin reads "It's time to be on the road again."  This pin gives the impression that it was traded at the end of the event right before it was time to leave.  The General is driving away past a billboard.  It's a great image.  You can see the outline of one of the Duke Boys in the passenger window.  I really like this pin.

Next up is a 1982 Georgia Senator pin.  The text reads "Boss Hogg Georgia Jaycees Senate" on the pin.  

It looks identical to the minor trading pin of the same year, just smaller.  Boss Hogg got a lot of love in the pin set.  Jaycees emphasize leadership training based on business development and management skills and Boss Hogg was the titan of business and industry in Hazzard County, so it's understandable that he gets so much attention from the Jaycees. 

Another Boss Hogg pin is the 1983 Sentate pin.  It features Boss Hogg stomping on his hat.  I'm sure the Dukes just foiled one of Boss's schemes and cost him to miss out on a lot of dirty money.  The action on this pin is a lot of fun.

Four pins of the seventeen from Georgia are Boss Hogg pins.  They must really have loved their crooked politicians!  Purely fictional of course.  

Daisy got another pin in 1983.  This is the woman's trading pin that says Georgia Jaycettes.  This time she's sitting on a peach crate drinking a...Coca-Cola!  Daisy Duke on a peach crate drinking a Coke!  Can you get more Georgia than that?  The crate and Coke also show up on...

Though he was absent in 1982, 1983 saw everyone's favorite shade tree mechanic get his own Jaycees pin.  Cooter is the major trading pin.  And would you look at that, he's leaning on a peach crate and drinking a Coke!

These two pins are made to be together.  I'm a big fan of Coca-Cola, as seen by these custom Dukes Coke bottles.  I love how the Dukes and Coke are together on these pins.  The Daisy pin, which says Jaycettes on it, is the woman's trading pin and Cooter is the kid's trading pin.  

I showed Boss's Caddy above in the Boss Hogg group shot, but it deserves a picture by itself.  Referred to as the On-To Chariman trader pin, The Cadillac is very well represented and even has the bull horns on the front.  It's throwing dust even though no one is driving it.  

Cooter didn't just get a pin of himself in the '83 series, his faithful tow truck also shows up.  Cooter had to be the hardest working man in Hazzard.  If he wasn't towing and repairing the General Lee, he was fishing Enos's patrol car out of the pond or pulling Rosco's out of a tree.  Cooter was always busy.  It's the kid's trader pin.  

The biggest pin of the 1983 set is the Delegate pin, just like in the '82 pins.  This time the General Lee isn't alone.  The pin collectors I spoke with referred to this as the General Lee crash scene, but us Dukes fans know the General Lee isn't crashing, it's "skiing" on two wheels to get away from Rosco!  

Possum on a gum bush!  Rosco and Boss can be seen watching them Duke Boys get away.  Rosco is only a silhouette, but you can see Boss with a dumbfounded look on his face.  This is the only time we see a Hazzard Patrol Car on the Georgia pins.  That's strange as I would consider the police car as the second most seen car on the show.  

This is the only pin that's sorta 3D.  The General is a separate piece on top of the patrol car.  It makes for a cool effect.  

 

The two biggest pins in the set are the 1982 General Lee Delegate pin and the 1983 General Lee Delegate pin.  The Delegates must have wanted the best pins all for themselves.  

More than half of the 1983 pins have a different type of pin back.  Only the Gen'ral and Daisy have the standard pin back, along with teeny Boss Hogg from 1982.  The rest have a pin mechanism that makes them hard to attach to a board.  

Speaking of attaching them to a board.  I found an odd wicker circle thing in the closet of my office.  I didn't want these beauties in a box and wanted a nice way to show them off.  The wicker circle thing did the trick.  Kevin asked me if I was looking for any other pins while he was helping me find the Dukes pins.  I told him it would be cool to have a couple very general Jaycees pins to add to the display.  He sent me this classic US Jaycees pins that I added to the top of the display.  It has 68/69 on the back of it.  I wonder if it's about fifteen years older than the Dukes pins.  

Kevin also gave me this great Georgia Jaycees pin.  It looks great with the Georgia Dukes pins.  

And finally he sent me this Iowa Jaycees pin.  I liked the idea of displaying the two states that gave us the Dukes Jaycees pins.  I'm really glad the members of the Georgia and Iowa Jaycees loved the Dukes of Hazzard so much that they incorporated it into their organization's history.  

I'm so excited that I tracked down all twenty-one pins.  It sure wasn't easy.  The wicker circle thing does it's job of displaying the pins pretty nicely.  I've spoken with several pin collectors and fellow Dukes collectors and no one knows of any other collectors that has a complete set.  Do you have one?  How did you get them all?  I love talking to fellow collectors!  This pin set definitely has a special place in the Dukes of Hazzard collection!

Coca-Cola and the Dukes of Hazzard - Share a Coke Dukes Bottles

Is there a more iconic brand than Coca-Cola?  The logo and the contour bottle are among the most recognizable images out there.  Disney, Ford, McDonald's, and Google come to mind, but in my opinion, Coke is at the top.  I've always loved the Coca-Cola brand.   I don't drink as much Coke as I used to, but I do enjoy an ice cold Coke from time to time.  I have several Coca-Cola t-shirts that I wear often, and even have a small collection of older glass Coke bottles that I found interesting.  A really cool marketing campaign that Coke released in 2014 is back again this year, the Share A Coke campaign.  Coke added names to their labels on regular plastic bottles sold in stores.  It was very popular and award winning.  In addition to the standard bottles in stores, fans of the product could go to shareacoke.com and have names printed on the label of glass 8 oz. bottles.  I had to incorporate the Dukes into the fun.

 I originally tried to make these bottles when I first became away of the possibility a few years ago.  There is a screening process and Coke doesn't really tell you the guidelines.  Copyrighted material or offensive wording probably get flagged.  When I first ordered, Cooter wasn't an allowed name and I didn't want to make everyone but our favorite mechanic so I put it on hold and sort of forgot about it. While organizing items at the new museum at Cooter's in the Valley in Luray, VA (Grand Opening 05/06/2017!) there was a Coke box with custom bottles inside and one was "Cooter Davenport."  I asked Alma if she used her clout, she has clout all over the world, to get this bottle printed and she said she had nothing to do with it, it was a gift created by a fan.  I figured, maybe they let up on the requirements this time around.  And then I sort of forgot about it again.

This week I was at Sam's Club and noticed a case of plastic Coke bottles had names printed on it.  Last summer Coke changed it up and went with song lyrics which was nice, but wasn't as much fun as the names.  I went online to make sure that wasn't an old case of bottles at the discount giant and read about Coke bringing the campaign back this summer and got all excited about it again.  I returned to shareacoke.com once more with the thought that maybe the trick to getting Cooter through the process was adding his last name, Davenport.  I made an order with all the characters last names and it went through!  Until it didn't; about an hour later I got a cancellation notice.  Coke didn't like Cooter Davenport or Cletus Hogg.  Weird that only those two were flagged.  I decided to try one more time, and this time I got through!  No last names, except one, and I even got our mechanic through!  First off is General Lee.  This was a last minute addition and I really thought it was going to get flagged.  Nope.  I got it!  Man, does it look good.  Very iconic.

Next up are the Duke Boys!  I didn't really want to include the last names and I'm glad it didn't work out doing that.  Adding too many letters makes the font a little smaller and in my opinion the bigger the name, the better.  The Coke Dukes Boys Bottles look great!

Maybe I just flew under the radar, or the flagger wasn't paying attention, but I got by the censors using "Crazy Cooter."  "Cooter" and "Cooter Davenport" didn't work (for me) but I think adding "Crazy" works out just fine.  Crazy Coca-Cola comin' at ya!

I do believe there are plastic versions of the standard bottles sold in stores with Daisy, Bo, and Luke out there.  I know I've seen Luke.  I considered chasing those, but haven't decided yet.  The glass bottle of Daisy sure is perfect.

One of the reasons I like not using the full character names is because "Uncle Jesse Duke" doesn't sound as good.  "Jesse Duke" isn't right either.  I'm glad I was able to just use Uncle Jesse.

Surely these flew under the radar because Boss Hogg would have been flagged for copyright usage, right?  I'm not complaining.  This might be my favorite in the collection.  I'm sure ol' Boss would love enjoying this Coke with some pickled pigs feet.

I debated on whether to just have "Rosco" on his bottle, but this is the one instance I went with the full name.  The font is quite small, but I think I made the right decision.  I love it, I love it.

Unlike Mego, I included both deputies.  I considered making them "Deputy Enos" and "Deputy Cletus" but they were never really referred to that way on the show.  Their first names were used most of the time, along with "Dipstick."  Possum on a gumbush, these look great.

Now you know, in my mind, I'm the third Duke Boy.

I actually made the Larry bottle way back when the promotion started and I tried to make the Dukes. I had to get it out for these pictures.  I made a Natalie bottle too.  The first year of this promotion, we found a plastic Natalie bottle at the beach and started looking for Larry.  We went to every gas station, pharmacy, and grocery store in Ocean City looking for Larry, but never found one.  When I got home, I stopped everywhere to find my name on a Coke.  I found three different variations of my sister's name, Kate, Katie, and Katherine, my cousin's name, Lara, who was named after my grandfather, Larry the first, I found my mom, Renee, Chad, Jeff & Jeffrey, and just about everyone else I knew. But no Larry.  At the end of that first summer, I had to resort to ebay for my plastic Larry bottle.  At least it was out there somewhere.  I have them in both plastic and glass now.

My collection of Dukes of Hazzard themed #shareacoke bottles sure is awesome.  This summer the twist to the campaign is that Coke is also releasing bottles with last names on them.  They haven't released a list of available names, but said they focused on about 200 popular last names and gave examples such as Miller, Smith, Lopez, and Davis.  I kind of doubt Franks is on that list, but you never know.  Duke might very well be available and if I do see one, I'm probably going to try to get as many Dukes names as I can.  Am I a little crazy?  Yup.