It's been a little busy around the Dukes Collector headquarters, which also happens to be my office, so I haven't been Dukes Collecting all that much. But I have been making moves that will lead to some really cool results for the future of Dukes Collector. Stay tuned. It seems I hadn't bought anything Dukes in quite a while, and then in about the span of a week I kinda went a little crazy on ebay and I got a whole bunch of cool stuff. Let's take a look.
While going through the thirty or so pages of ebay with Richie at Ben and Alma's house, I used buy-it-now to pounce on this item. This is the Ben Cooper Boss Hogg Halloween costume on the cardboard hanger. It was delivered on Halloween day. That worked out perfectly. I already have this costume in the two different Ben Cooper boxes. Check out a Dukes Halloween costume filled post here.
The Boss Hogg golden era Halloween Costume is much better than the Bo costume. Only Boss and Bo were released for some reason. The mask looks like Boss, where as the Bo looked like He-Man.
Ben Cooper costumes really wanted other people to know who you were dressing up as. They almost always included the character name front and center on the costume. At least Boss Hogg also includes his signature white suit. The Bo costume just has the flag and a picture of the General. My favorite part of this costume is the blue bow tie that has Dukes of Hazzard written on it. Boss always wore that, right? I've been looking for this version of the Ben Cooper Boss Hogg costume and I'm happy I can finally add it to the collection.
Next up is a weird little General Lee rip-off 1/64. It is an orange Charger with a 10 on the hood and red, whit,e and blue signage on it that was released in the early '80s. That qualifies it as a Gen'ral rip-off and merits its place in my collection. The doors also open. The package is pretty decent for how cheap it was.
Toward the end of the Dukes of Hazzard run on CBS, John Schneider began to advertise for Mac tools. I'm not sure how long the sponsorship lasted, but he was on some print ads mostly and showed up on a panel advertisement that was on the side of Mac Tools trucks that Neal Clayton unearthed recently. The only other product in the campaign was this promotional mug. I've been searching for one for quite a while.
The mug screams the '80s. It has that thick plastic feel to it that hasn't been used since that revered decade. It has two different pictures of more than usual wavy-haired John holding some tools and looking a little embarrassed. The mug is in perfect condition and it seems to have never been used. This is one of those fringe Dukes items that I love getting my hands on.
Next up is yet another Dukes of Hazzard movie crew jacket! Now I have three from the movie, and two from the show. Man, that's a lot of Dukes Crew Jackets!
This one is made by Dickies as opposed to the others that were made by Carhartt and Columbia. This one seems to be more rare, and may actually be one of a kind. It was made for the props team on the movie. It has the name Thoresen embroidered into it. The jacket came from Kurt Thoresen who was the Assistant Prop Master on the set of the Dukes movie. Kurt has worked in the props department on several movies such as the Waterboy, Spring Breakers, and the Infiltrator. He has an impressive Hollywood listing on IMDB. The jacket has the 01 on the front and the word props in General Lee text. Whoever designed this jacket was definitely a Dukes fan.
The other two movie jackets just have a standard logo on the arm. The props one not only has the 01 on the front, but that back has a big "Team Hazzard" logo on the it. This is the most stylish of the three different movie jackets I own, and I think it is my favorite as well. Thank you very much Kurt for the opportunity to add this great piece to the collection.
I was surprised when I opened the package to see that Kurt added in a Dukes crew hat and a call sheet from the set! The hat has the same logo as the other jackets and is awesome.
This call sheet is from February 3, 2005. That is just over two weeks after I was on set for my scenes in the movie.
Looking over the paperwork, they filmed several marquee scenes over these couple of days.
The final item in this post is a doozy. This is the Dukes of Hazzard Battery Powered General Lee Dashboard With Lighted Fuzz Detector. And it is factory fresh, super mint, in perfect condition.
This museum quality item comes with a an equally impressive story. New friend of the blog, Tara, emailed me about it and ended up selling it to me. She said it was found in her grandparent's home with some other gifts. Over Christmas of '81, her grandparents bought this and several other (non-Dukes) gifts for her cousin, wrapped them up, and hid them in the attic. They sat there for thirty-five years until just recently when Tara discovered them. She actually had to tear off the wrapping paper to see what was inside. Those kinds of stories are collector's folklore! I'm so glad she contacted me and it made it's way to Dukes Collector HQ. What a gem!
The package has the same artwork on all four sides. There is a nice picture of the Duke cousins and Boss Hogg above the Gen'ral and a drawing of the product.
This is a frequently used shot of Luke, Daisy, and Bo, with J.D. photoshopped in. It's interesting that they used both photos and drawings.
The top flap has an additional picture. It is a photo of a young Dukes fan playing with a drawing of the dashboard. Interesting again how they mixed photos and artwork. There is also artwork of the features of the dashboard such as the working light, the clicker CB mike, and the ignition key with start motor noise.
Tara's grandparents paid $9.99 for this wonderful toy at a store called Bradlees. Google tells me Bradlees was a department store in the CT/NY/NJ area that was around from the late '50s until the late '90s. I'm sure it was very similar to Fisher's Big Wheel and Hills that we had in our area. All of those regional stores went away once Walmart went big time. Thank you so much Tara for finding me online and making the dashboard a part of the collection. I wish your cousin had put more Dukes items on his Christmas list.
I have a loose version of this toy in the collection. It is a little beat up, and no longer has the windshield. I got it from Pop Culture Connection in Greensburg, PA and showed the above photo on the blog once before, but I never wrote an in-depth post about it. It was the early days of the blog. Now I know what I'm doing. But I'm again trying something new... anyone know anything about wordpress publishing?
