A Dukes Merchandise Mystery: Dukes of Hazzard Pint Glasses

I love new Dukes of Hazzard things.  Especially unexpected items like this.  These are the brand new Dukes of Hazzard Pint Glasses.  And they come with a bit of mystery, but first the pictures.

The box uses the current standard Dukes of Hazzard design.

The back also has the same blurb that is on all the newer products.  I'm really surprised the glasses feature the Duke Cousins primarily and not the General Lee.  Though I am not complaining about it.  It just seems to be the trend with newer products to highlight the General over the cast.  But in my opinion, the more items with my pals John, Tom, Cathy, and especially Ben on them, the better.

The box was not sealed, so I took the glasses out for pictures.  This one features a picture that I haven't seen used before on products.  It is from the episode "Birds Gotta Fly" where Daisy leaves the farm to race Molly Hargrove's racecar.  It is interesting that they would use such an episode-specific shot.

The other one is a much more familiar picture of Daisy.  This image was on a poster back then and recently used on a newer t-shirt (available on 80stees.com).  This glass really reminds me of that old Sesame Street  character, Teeny Little Super Guy (Thanks Google).

They could be friends.  Or Super Guy could wish they would be more than friends.  Keep dreaming Super Guy.

Opposite of the picture is the trademark information.  2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.  This is a very nice set and great addition to any Dukes collection, but is it readily available?  This is where the mystery lies.

Back in September, I found a listing for these glasses on Entertainment Earth while pre-ordering my Exclusive KITT with Micheal Knight set (still can't wait for that sucker).  I used G+ to share the glass set, and spelled the word "found" wrong. (I'm not the biggest social network guy, and only have a G+ account because it's built into this blog and my Droid phone).  I pre-ordered the set immediately and figured I would wait until they arrived to discuss them here on the blog.  Then on October, EE told me that the set was cancelled.  I was bummed.  But last week, the set I now own popped up on ebay.  I just had to outbid everyone else and get it.

I searched online and I can't find the set for sale anywhere.  There are a few mentions of it, but they all say the same as Entertainment Earth, that it is cancelled.  So where did my set come from?  Could it be a production sample?  Could it be a super rare one of a kind?  Or perhaps the set wasn't cancelled and this is just one of the first sets to be put on the shelves.  Either way, I'm happy.  I did find out that the glasses are made by a company called Silver Buffalo from New York City.  They make a whole bunch of novelty items with entertainment licences.  The picture above is from their fall catalog and features what must have been the prototype shot.  The box graphic is very generic and the left glass has a different image.  This image is a much more commonly used shot and I'm surprised they went with the "Birds Gotta Fly" one.  If mine isn't super rare, and more do pop up, I'll surely buy several sets and actually use some of them.  Maybe once the museum gets up and running, I can serve my visitors beverages in these very pint glasses.

While looking through another Silver Buffalo catalog, they are a whole-seller and don't sell directly to the public, I found the above mug.  It is in a newer catalog and might be coming soon.  Awesome.  If museum guests want coffee, I'll have that covered too.

Score! White Lightning Rosco car, Underoos, and a new Knight Rider commercial?

Got a couple of great times recently to add to the collection.

This 1/64 set is slightly different than the other ones I have.  The other set with the same four vehicles has the General Lee and Boss Hogg's Caddy in the opposite positions.  This one is about as beat up as the ones I have, but I got it for a really good price and it's different, so I had to pick it up.

The General has the orange stickers for the 01s and the flag.  Our resident 1/64 expert, Sam, can fill me in on which General this is, and where it was made.  It is weird that some of these original Boss Hogg Caddys have the words "Boss Hogg" on them and some don't.

The Caddy's in the playsets do not have the text on the car, while the double and single carded ones do.  I wonder why.

I also picked up the Daisy Dukes Underoos.  I didn't realize that the shirt I bought in July was from this set.  These are really rare and hard to come by in the package.  This one is still sealed in plastic.

They only cost a buck when they were new.  Crazy.

I got the General Lee set all the way back in April of 2012.  I now have two of the three Underoos sets.  Got to find that Bo and Luke set.

And the biggest score is the White Lightning version of the new 1/18 Rosco Patrol Car from Johnny Lightning.  I did a full review of this car here.

The aspect that makes this car a WL is the classic white rubber wheels.

The rims are also gold, though it is kind of hard to see the color in these pictures from my Droid camera.  The rumor is that there are only 100 WL versions of this car.  So I am very lucky to have found one.  A few went on ebay for quite a bit more than I wanted to pay.  I was fortunate to find one at a reasonable "buy it now" price and I grabbed it right away.  The thing about these White Lightnings is they only exist to make the online retailers extra money.  Most of the cars aren't sold in standard stores, so a buyer can't usually find one on the shelf.  But with a product with such a small target audience as diecast cars, maybe these are seen as bonuses for the retailers who keep the hobby alive.  I am still on the look out for the WL 00 Mustang.

While watching Sunday Night Football last night, I was floored when the General Lee's buddy KITT showed  up on TV to say hello.  If you are familiar with my blog, you know that I also love Knight Rider.  Seeing the original KITT talk about smart trains was surprising but really cool.  Check out the commercial from youtube:



I know it does't look perfectly formatted to the side of the blog, but who wants to watch it any smaller?  GE owns NBC and Universal who owns Knight Rider, so that is how this all goes together.  It is a really cool that they are advertising their brilliant machines by using one of TV's brilliant machines.  And hearing William Daniels as KITT again is so cool.  (He'll always be KITT to me, not Mr. Feeny)  While searching for this video on youtube, I found another similar video that GE made that I haven't spotted on TV yet:



Jeff will love the end of it.  It is another great commercial.  I expected Arnold as the T-800 to show up.  KITT and Johnny-5 together is awesome.

Original Dukes of Hazzard toy ads

Google is an amazing thing.  While googling one of my favorite searches, myself, I stumbled across Google's archive of newspapers.  You can search thousands of old newspapers from all over the country.  After reading old articles about me, my dad, and my grandfather, I am Larry III after all, I started searching for mentions of my other favorite thing, the Dukes.  TV listings were all over the place.  And there were quite a few good articles about the show and cast.  Fitting in perfectly with the theme of this website, I found these old toy advertisements.  These are originals from the early eighties.  It is so cool to see these items treated as just some new toys and not highly sought after collectibles.  Let's take a look.

Super Buy doesn't begin to describe getting this playset for less than seven bucks.  This playset has become super rare.  I love that they describe the General Lee as "Dukes car."  I thought my family was the only ones to do that.  A friend of mine found an un-opened case of these playsets labeled Dukes, but when he opened it, it was all Barbie western sets.  Bummer.  

It is crazy to think about how the prices have escalated over the past twenty-five to thirty years.  This car, mint in package, goes for at least $25, and can go up to $40---at least ten times the original price. Great investment back then.  "Crashes apart when it hits most anything."  I wonder what they hit with it that didn't cause it to crash apart.  

These cars are pretty common and not nearly as rare as the finger racers.  You could buy a loose General wrist racer car for close to $3.50.  So not everything skyrocketed in price.  Mint on card goes for more though.  I like how bad the pictures are. You can barely make out Daisy.  

Our Pal, Uncle Jesse, will love this one.  The Dukes of Hazzard Barnbuster is a favorite to many Dukes fans.  Now we know how much it originally sold for, and how much you could get it for on sale.  I was never able to make "The Dukes stunt car" do a wheelie on one rear wheel.  It lists a lot of accessories, so I wonder what the "more" was.

I never set up any of my Dukes slot car sets.  I used to have other ones when I was a kid, and the car never stayed on the track too long.  I can't imagine the jump working at all.  Has anyone ever landed the jump on the track and got the cars to keep going?  "Zany" is a pretty cool word to use to describe the show.  This set was $40 new, and the new sets are over $100.  I guess that's about right.  You could probably get this set for around $65 to $100 now, depending on the condition.

The Radio Controlled General was kind of a disappointing toy.  It couldn't turn, just go forward and backward.

Everybody loves Dukes of Hazzard Mego figures ---  $4.44 for a General with Bo and Luke is a heck of a bargain.  The figures in the second ad are clearly the 8 inch figures, but are being advertised as the 3 3/4 inch.  Under $3 for the General with figures is outrageous   Someone should have stocked up and waited for ebay to be invented.  I bet someone did.

The Dukes Power Cycle: it has the General Lee look.  The spin out lever could not have lasted too long on those old big wheels.  It was just a piece of plastic that wedged into the spoke.  The steel roll bar is an odd feature. This is an item that can go for more than ten times its original price.  

And talk about your holy grails of Dukes merchandise.  The Tennis Shoes are way up there on the hardest to find items.  I have a shoe box, but no shoes.  They are "as rugged as the General Lee."  Now about the insert to the ad, I wonder if anyone ever showed up to the store expecting a real Charger.  I'm sure they were just handing out Ertl 1/64s, but that is pretty misleading.  Sweet Feet? Grape Feet?  I'm gonna just end this post here.

New 1/18 Scale Diecast 00 Mustang from Johnny Lightning

The "Fall Season of new Dukes diecasts" continues.  I told you it was a thing.  I just received the new Johnny Lightning 00 Mustang in 1/18 scale.  

Right off the bat we have to discuss the name.  Johnny Lightning has labeled this car "Cooter's Ford Mustang" which is in no way correct.  I'll start with a little history of the Double Zero.  

The car was only seen in the 1997 TV movie "The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!"  The shot above is from the movie when the bad guys were swapping the stock version for one with a souped up engine to try to beat the General Lee by cheating.  The confusion about the car comes from the fact that in the reunion movie, it is referred to as the "the only car to beat the General Lee in an overland car race."  It is assumed this happened during the series.  It didn't.  Many people confuse 00 for Lucifer which was seen in episode 7 of the series entitled "Luke's Love Story."  Lucifer was also a '68 Mustang, but it was black and red and bore the number 13.  Double Zero was not in the series.  

The 00 has been a favorite "bad guy" diecast for the toy companies for quite a few years.  The General Lee raced against a bunch of cars throughout the series, but there was never a "nemesis" car that ever came back.  The only bad guy vehicle to ever make more than one appearance was The Mean Green Machine and it doesn't really matter because a) it was only seen on Coy and Vance episodes, b) it was a tank, and c) it was stupid.  Huey Hogg's VW Beetle was seen on more than one occasion, but it was never a threat to the General and was a parody of Boss Hogg's Caddy.  Once the reunion movie was released, Double Zero took up the mantle as the General Lee's villian.  Several versions of the toy were released and it was seen in the video games.  But it was never driven by Cooter.  Now that that rant is over, let's get back to the review of the new release.  

The car is a well done replica.  It is basically the same as the first 1/18 released in 2001, only a year after the first General Lee was released in 1/18. This new one has a different hood and windshield wipers, which the first one did not.  

The box follows the same design as all of the recently released Dukes items.  The blurb is the same as on most diecasts.

There is an added QR code that takes you to Ford's website.  Interesting.  

On the show, the 00 didn't have a front plate, and I don't think you ever saw the back plate.  This release has "00" on both.

It is nicely detailed on par with the new Rosco Patrol Car, but nowhere near the new Auto World General Lee.

Comparing it to the last release from eleven years ago, it is pretty much the same.  The numbers and flames are in the same place, and seem to be the same artwork.    

You can see the added wipers and black hood scoop on the new one.  The car in the reunion movie did not have a hood scoop.  

The old car also had "Hazzard" under the 00 on the plates.  

Under the hood looks identical.  

The old box used the rebel flag theme seen on the Dukes diecasts of the time.  

The old one came with a 1/64 version of the Mustang as well.  

Back to the name issue.  RC/Ertl/Joyride/JL/Tomy has released this car at least six times already.  It was released as "1968 Mustang" as well as part of the Hazzard County Hot Pursuit Set, and as the "Double Zero Mustang."  All these names are quite generic and they don't address the car as belonging to a cast member.  

There have been three different 1/64 castings.  I was ready to come out guns blazing and call Johnny Lightning all kinds of derogatory names because they got the name wrong.  Lazy and not willing to do research came to mind.  But then I did some research of my own.  The newest diecasts re-released by Tomy under the Johnny Lightning label all came out before under RC/Ertl.  

The Hazzard County Car Set with the Mustang refers to it as Cooter's.  I pulled out the original version of this same set (same package design and all) and found this:

The RC2 set (left) that came out in 2006 identifies the Mustang as Cooter's as well.  This came out before the Johnny Lightning version which called it Double Zero.  So JL was just going along with what was already on file.  We as fans should have noticed this long ago and brought it to their attention.  I never really paid attention because I just saw it as a re-release of the Hot Pursuit Set in the rebel flag packaging.  But that set never named the cars.  

I realize I am in the minority of the target audience for this car.  Most people buying it aren't buying two (one to keep sealed) and don't already have around ten different versions of it.  Most people are buying this car because it looks cool, they remember it racing against the General, and to place beside their General.  Being called "Cooter's Ford Mustang" probably isn't going to be a deciding factor for anyone to buy the car or not.  Little details like this can drive us diehards nuts, but it shouldn't take away from the good things about these new toys.  Nearly 34 years after the show premiered, we are still getting new Dukes of Hazzard products.  That makes me very happy.

What dosen't make me too happy is the fact that there is a White Lightning out there and I don't have it yet.  I got outbid on both the Rosco Patrol Car WL and the 00 WL.  I don't want to pay big bucks for them.  But I might have to.  

2012 has been very big for Dukes of Hazzard 1/18 cars.  The Auto World General Lee, the Johnny Lightning Rosco Patrol Car, and now the Johnny Lightning 00 Mustang have all been released.  The 99 Cooter Camaro has been pushed back to Feburay and there are rumors of something yellow coming out next summer.  Great time to be a Dukes fan.