I've been hitting some home runs adding great pieces to the Dukes of Hazzard collection. Here's a new batch for Dukes goodness.
First up is a really cool piece all ready for display. It's an animation cel from "The Dukes" cartoon that ran for two seasons during the Golden Era of the Dukes. This image features Bo and Luke, not Coy and Vance, who were on the the first season. This is the most commonly used image from the cartoon.
That makes this special, though, is that it's an actual animation cel, not just artwork from the series.
Looking at it from an angle shows that it has depth and is made up of several layers of art.
I got it from a former TVGuide executive that said it was actually production used and then hung in the TVGuide offices. I have no way of verifying this information, but it sounds good to me. Unless anyone can disprove this claim, that's what I'm going with. Boss Hogg likes the story.
The cel is professionally framed and the frame is high end.
The frame work was done buy a Thousand Oaks, California based framer company that's still around today. They do professional high end jobs and seems like the kind of company TVGuide would use for their work. I don't have proof that this is the original artwork used in production, but I don't have proof that it's not.
It's about twice the size of the actual toy and made of a solid hunk of resin. I would imagine it's hand molded, but can't be sure.
The Rosco wrist racer isn't as prevalent as the General, but there is no mistaking this as wind up Hazzard Patrol car.
A majority of it is painted gray, but the bottom is unpainted and shows the resin to be silly putty colored. There are no markings on the car.
The car also came with a standard Rosco Wrist Racer and you can see how much bigger the mold is. The seller said the standard car and launcher are production samples. I can't find any differences between the sample and other Rosco wind-ups in my collection.
Let's say this guy is three times bigger then the standard. How cool is it that I own this piece of the toy making process? I wonder if there is a resin General Lee mold out there somewhere. Hot pursuit to find it! I love it, I love it!!
Next is a new item from John Schneider's online store. It's his replica of his famous belt buckle. This one is a little lighter than an original, but the same size. The stones are actually stickers but it looks great.
John's autograph is etched into the back. This is a very cool piece.
Here's some rare commercially produced golden era Dukes items. These red mittens kept the young Dukes fan's hands warm during the winters of the early '80s.
There are several different versions of Dukes gloves and mittens and they are all nearly impossible to track down. I have a
brown pair with a similar image of the Gen'ral, but a very different design.
Oddly enough, not long after I found the red mittens, a single red glove popped up on ebay and I grabbed it too. It has the same image as the mittens.
The mittens look to be unused, but the glove may have seen a snowball fight or two.
Maybe the wearer of this glove was in a heated snowball battle with a Knight Rider lover. Perhaps the youngin took of his left glove off to make snowballs faster while keeping the right one on to throw. After the victory was proclaimed and the Knight Rider loving snowball pugilist cowered in defeat, the triumphant Dukes fan forgot to grab the left glove and only this right one made it home.
The images are nearly identical on the glove and mittens, but the mittens illustration is printed on where the glove has an embossed design.
It's interesting that they are so similar but the glove is much more 3D in its appearance.
Next up is a golden era Iron-On Transfer that doesn't appear to be licensed to me. It has the General jumping in front of a rebel flag and "Hazzard County USA" beside it.
I have a hat with this image on it. Neither on the hat, nor on this package is there a mention of Warner Bros. Also not saying Dukes of Hazzard tells me it's a knock off item. I good one, but knock off all the same.
Now here's a interesting addition. This is a director's chair back for a guest star that has a really cool name.
Duke Robbins played the role of Zack in the Season 2 episode, Treasure of Hazzard.
He had a very small role, but it was memorable. In the episode, Bo and Luke are helping history professor Laura find a civil war era payroll box. The search leads them to Hazzard Swamp and Zack's Landing, where Waylon tells us the last census shows alligators outnumber people a thousand to one. Zack has boats for hire and rents to the Dukes and Laura. He tells his pal Uncle Jesse "watch out for them gators Jesse, cause after the census, they're gonna be watching you." After all this alligator talk, Laura falls off the boat and Bo jumps in to fight a gator off. It's a great scene where John actually wrestled the beast.
Zack has another quick scene later in the episode where bad guys steal a boat and shot at him. It's a small role but the close up of him during his line seems like he was featured more than a standard one line walk on role. Having his own director's chair also gives me the impression he was someone of importance. Maybe all the guest stars got a director's chair, but it doesn't seem likely. The internet doesn't help much as a search for him only brings up this one role. Maybe he was friends with Gy Waldron or Paul Picard or another producer or crew member.
The chair back seems to be made of brown denim. It has held up remarkedly well for being over forty-five years old.
Here's an image of Catherine in the same type of chair (with a dog). This is the only Dukes director's chair back I've ever seen. If it had to be from a two scene actor, it sure makes it cooler that his name is "Duke."
The final piece in today's post is something I've been after for a long time.
It's the super-duper rare variant pillow case! I didn't know this existed until one sold on ebay for a crazy amount of money a few years ago. It's the same color as the standard pillow case, but has a totally different image on it.
The Duke cousins are featured on the top left above a unique logo with rebel flags. There aren't many colors used and the image is abstract. It works but the faces need more details for me.
Rosco and Boss are in hot pursuit of the Gen'ral on the larger image of the pillow case.
The standard pillow case is on top and the rarer one is below. The logos used are totally different and the art of Bo and Luke is more defined on the standard. The rarer one could be a Canadian variant but it has no foreign markings. I've never seen a packaged version to definitively show why it exists. I don't believe it's from another country; I just think it was produced in lower frequency than the standard one. Each time one shows up on ebay, which is only about five times that I can remember, the price is crazy.
I was able to get mine at a not so crazy price because it was listed with this above pillow case and the other was the only one shown in the featured listing photo. In my opinion, the above case is just a homemade pillow case sewn from either the sheets or the curtains. This material is easy to come by. I got lucky that the rarer one was hidden in the second picture. I wrote a post about nearly all the Dukes of Hazzard bed sets, blankets and sleeping bags a while ago.
You can check it out here. I am nearly certain that I have all the sleep set items, now that I got the rare pillow case, but you never know. Do you know of any other sleep items I'm missing?
More New Dukes Stuff blog posts coming very soon, don't go too far away!
