Remember when the Dukes of Hazzard went to commercial and there was a freeze frame? We're back just like that with another post filled to the brim with Dukes of Hazzard 1/18 diecast cars! Waylon told you to stick around, and I'm glad you did.
Ertl's American Muscle line of cars mostly consisted of popular muscle cars. It included the General Lee early on, but after the popularity of the Dukes of Hazzard cars grew to great heights, Ertl decided to build a whole line around the Gen'ral that included other "star cars" outside of the Dukes. Ertl's new brand was called Joyride. Besides the General Lee, other cars in Ertl's Joyride line include KITT, Ecto-1, The Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino, The Flintstone's Flintmobile, the Mystery Machine, Bandit's Trans Am, Austin Powers' Shaguar, the Bluesmobile, and a variety of cars from the James Bond movies and early Fast and the Furious movies. Replicas of Orange County Choppers were also included in the Joyride line. The Joyride line wouldn't exist without the popularity of the American Muscle General Lee cars from a few years before.
The first 1/18 General Lee that bore the Joyride logo was released in 2003. It is the final car to come out in the "flag box." The only difference between this car and previous releases is the Joyride logo replacing the American Muscle logo above the Dukes logo. It does say "The General Lee" like the Barris cars, as opposed to just "General Lee" like the previous cars in the American Muscle line.
The box is bilingual and has everything in English and French. It has the same description of the show and car as the majority of the American Muscle cars. So you don't have to go back and re-read the previous post, but feel free to do so, here is the blurb again: "Recreate the action and excitement of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' TV series with the authentic die cast replica of the famous 'General Lee.' The General Lee is without question the most famous car on television. The Good Ol' Boys, cousins Bo and Luke Duke, race around Hazzard County avoiding brushes with the law in their indestructible 1969 Dodge Charger. This bright orange, Southern dirt road express, with the Confederate Flag on it's roof, racing numbers on it's doors, and signature dixie horn steals the show and is always the hero in the end!"
The car is identical to the previous versions. The only difference is the box.
The bottom of the box features the new RC2 logo. RC2 stands for Racing Champions Corporation. They acquired Ertl a few years earlier. This is one of the cars I didn't know existed until I was planning for this blog series. I assumed the first use of the Joyride logo was the next car. Dave DeWitt and I had our lists pretty much finalized, but then I noticed the Joyride logo on a flag box on ebay. It a bizarre twist of luck, two of these cars popped up on the auction site at the same time, within hours of each other, and both me and Dave were able to add them to our collection. I probably just never noticed the different logo on the flag box before, but I haven't seen any since and I have the feeling this is a rarer variation.
I call this one the Joyride Box General Lee. The first Dukes 1/18 in a non-flag box came out in 2004. For those keeping track at home, that's a different General Lee in each year of the new millennium. The Joyride box is more in line with all the other cars in the Joyride line. You can find KITT and the Gran Torino in similar boxes that just have their license logos on the left but have the same orange and blue design. The box features a picture of the 1/25 diecast General Lee, which is an odd choice. It's obviously a picture of a toy and not a glamour shot of a real General Lee like before.
The back of the box features the same blurb we know and love. It is bilingual and also features new pictures of the Dukes.
The pictures featured on the back are familiar ones. The shot of Daisy with the boys wearing the cowboy hats was taken before filming started in Georgia. The other shot is from season two when the look was more standard.
I really don't know why Joyride/Ertl would include a picture of the 1/25 car on the box. The same picture is on the similarly themed 1/25 Joyride General Lee, but I would think they would want to use the most detailed car for the box, that being the 1/18.
The Joyride logo is big on each side of the box. That is why I call it the Joyride box. You can't miss the logo. A few other cast pictures are included on the top.
Both of these shots were also taken before filming started. I've heard John and Tom both say they hated those cowboy hats. They just didn't fit the characters.
The bottom of the box has the same information as the other boxes, just with a different design.
My Joyride Box standard General Lee is on a grey base with the American Muscle logo on it. That's a weird addition because the American Muscle logo isn't anywhere else on the box and all other bases are black.
A year later a chase version of the Joyride Box General Lee came out. It's another dirty version. This dirty car looks very different that the flag box Dirty General. The mud is applied finer as if it was still raining when the Duke Boys drove through a puddle. The earlier car has bigger chunks of mud as if they actually drove in a mud puddle. The wheels are dirtier on this version and you can barely tell they are silver.
The box is the same as the standard version.
It is dated 2005.
When I started writing this series of posts, I knew there was one car I didn't have. The Supercar Collectibles 1 of 252 Dirty Black Limited Edition General Lee. Throughout the years I tried to track one down, but being limited to only 252 copies, I never got my hands on one. I decided to write the blog without it and just use a picture of Dave's version. While writing this post one popped up on ebay at an incredible price and I couldn't buy it fast enough. Now it is a part of my collection and a part of this post. Unfortunately it didn't make into the big group shot, but then the shot wouldn't have been so perfectly laid out with ten rows of four.
Supercar Collectibles is an online diecast retailer. I bought several of these cars from them. They are one of the biggest diecast sellers out there, especially 1/18 scale. Because of their clout in the industry, they were able to sell a few exclusive special edition Dukes of Hazzard cars. This is their first.
The 252 car, as I call it, is the first representation of the Gen'ral portrayed differently than we ever saw it on screen. It's a black Charger with the General Lee uniform, that's dirty. It's an interesting take on our favorite car. It comes in the same Joyride box as the cars above.
The box is similar to the previous two Joyride box cars, but it is not bilingual. The other main different marking is the sticker on the window that says "Limited edition 1969 Dodge Charger 1 of 252." I haven't opened it to see what the number is. The 252 car is the final 1/18 TV show car of the silver era. As I proclaimed in my "Eras" post, the movie is the dividing line between the silver and modern era. Everything that follows the 252 car is a part of the modern era.
Joyride, Ertl, and Warner Bros. had an opportunity to update the Dukes toys to reflect the tiny but significant changes made to the General Lee for the movie. They could reflect the Jeep that Daisy drove as a new Wrangler Rubicon and the different models of Hazzard County patrol cars in 1/64. They could add Billy Prickett's Mustang to the fray and give us another car for the General Lee to race against. They could reflect the differences to the General Lee like the passenger side mirror, the change in General Lee text, and the tires with bold white lettering and they could even include an end of the movie version of the Gen'ral that is damaged and has the back window shot out. But they did none of that stuff and just repackaged the old toys in a new box. All of the marketing material for the movie shared the same theme. The movie items boxes are purpley-red with engines and car parts barely visible in the background. The box is bilingual.
The Z logo, a classic Dukes logo with a big Z underlining Hazzard, is on everything movie related. Johnny Knoxville, Jessica Simpson and Seann William Scott are pictured above the logo. I never understood why the toy packages edited out Seann's Led Zeppelin graphic on his shirt. It was present on the posters, dvds, and other items.
The General Lee pictured is an image taken of a movie General. It has the white letters visible on the tires. You never see the General Lee with the windows up.
The top of the box features the Z logo and another picture of the movie General Lee. Eagle eyed collectors might notice that this is actually the same image used on the front of the box, just reversed and edited. They did a nice job with their editing by adding a non-reversed 01 and removing the Charger symbol from the grill. But they didn't reverse the windshield wipers, they go the wrong way in the image. You almost got me photoshoppers!
The back of the box features the same image of the movie cast above the Z logo. There is a new description that describes the movie. It reads: "The Dukes of Hazzard is racing to the big screen! Based on the hit classic television series, the movie is an action comedy set in present day and follows the adventures of 'good old boys' cousins Bo (Seann William Scott) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville) Duke, who with the help of their eye-catching cousin Daisy (Jessica Simpson) and moonshine-running Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), try and save the family farm from being destroyed by Hazzard County's corrupt commissioner Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds). Their efforts constantly find the 'Dukes Boys' eluding authorities in 'The General Lee,' that keeps them one step ahead of the dimwitted antics of the small southern town's Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane (M.C. Gainey).
It killed me to type the misspelled "Roscoe" but Joyride made that mistake, not me. The bilingual box states the French title of the show and movie in the French paragraph, Sherif, fais-moi peur. I've discussed the French title a few times.
Also on the back of the box is an area that showcases other Dukes movie offerings. The title says "Collect all the Dukes vehicle from Joyride." Someone didn't have a grammar checker! This part of the box reminds me of the good old days of checking the back of the action figure packages to see what other He-Man or GIJoes I had to get. Of course I have all of these toys. The 1/64 three car set actually didn't include Rosco's car, because it looked so different in the movie. The picture is of the TV show cars. The movie three car set included Daisy's Jeep, but not an updated version. It was labeled to include the police car though.
The standard movie General Lee, as well as all the movie products, were released in 2005, when the movie came out. They all came in the same box.
The next movie car is another Dirty General Lee. This is one of the cars I missed along the way and didn't know existed. Dave DeWitt pointed me in the right direction and I bought one while prepping this series of posts. The "dirt" applied to this car is finer than the original flag box dirty car and more resembles the Joyride box dirty Gen'ral. Comparing the Joyride box dirty General and the movie dirty General, they are nearly identical. They both came out in 2005, so they were probably a part of the same production and just went into different boxes.
One of the nicest effects on the dirty cars is the windshield has a clean area where the wipers wiped the mud away. The flag box version had a totally dirty windshield.
The boxes are the same for all movie cars.
There are a few special edition movie General Lees. The first two have long titles that I totally made up in 2012, but because no one has challenged me in the past five years, they are now official titles. That's how it works in the Dukes of Hazzard collecting world, so look it up. The first one is the black letter brushed chrome 1/18 General Lee. The title is rather self explanatory. The car is brushed chrome and has the General Lee uniform on.
The General Lee text is in black, like every 1/18 General Lee diecast that came out in the previous five years. More on that soon. The chrome General Lees are a little tougher to find, but are not limited to a certain number. Most people don't realize there are three different chrome Gen'rals, but as you will see there are. I have seen some sellers try to sell chrome cars in TV show themed boxes, but the chrome cars only came in movie boxes.
The brushed chrome black letter car comes with the TV show CNH 320 plate on the back and a rebel flag plate on the front. Neither are correct as the show or movie car never had a rebel flag front plate, only the show police cars did, and the movie had an updated fictional CNH 320 plate on the General that resembled modern Georgia plates.
Now is where it gets interesting. As noted in a 2012 blog post, I mistakenly bought another brushed chrome General Lee thinking it was a shiny chrome General Lee (that one is next). When I studied the brushed car, I noticed it was a different version than the one I already had. It's officially called the blue letter brushed chrome 1/18 General Lee. It has that name because it has blue letters.
It took 5 years, but the 1/18 General Lee finally had the correct blue letters on the text that reads General Lee beside the flag. I'm very surprised it took Ertl so long to realize they overlooked this Dukes detail. I'm also surprised the first car to get it right was a chrome Gen'ral, not an orange one.
The box is the same on all the movie cars.
The other odd feature to the blue letter car is the lack of plate stickers. This car has no front or rear plates. I really wonder why there are two versions of the brushed chrome car, weird.
The final movie car, in my opinion, is the nicest special edition movie car. It's the shiny chrome 1/18 General Lee. It has a mirrored finish and really stands out. It might be the second nicest of all the non-orange General Lees, besides the gold, of course. It seems to be the most rare of the three chrome Gen'rals and took me a while to track down.
It has the black letters and the front and rear plates. It is the last car to have to incorrect black letters. It's always blue from here on out.
The brown box premiered in 2006 and nearly every Dukes car has used it since. A large number of Dukes items utilize the brown box, not just diecasts. The tumbler glasses, and the Figures Toys action figures also use the theme. The first brown box 1/18 General Lee was released by Joyride.
With a new box design comes a new description. The new one reads: "THE DUKES OF HAZZARD classic television series celebrates the good ol' USA, so get ready for action-Hazzard County Style! The Duke boys and their beautiful cousin Daisy are battling the law and fighting for the good guys. Despite a knack for getting into trouble, the Dukes of Hazzard always have a way of getting out... eventually. Along the way, fans enjoy racing cars, flying cars, tumbling cars, and plenty of good old-fashioned country fun... mostly in cars!"
It's an all right description, but it doesn't mention the General Lee. It is also printed in French.
It was released in 2006.
The first brown box features a nice shot of our cousins above a different classic logo. It also features images of the movie General Lee that have the white letters on the tires edited out. You can tell the first one is the same reversed shot because the wipers are going the wrong direction. The Charger badge is missing from both shots.
They really should have mentioned the Gen'ral.
The brown box Joyride car is the first orange 1/18 to have the correct blue letter General Lee text.
It took seven years for the 1/18 General Lee for get properly chased. In 2007 Rosco's Police Car finally came to the scale. The car is a 1974 Dodge Monaco. It's not the 1978 Dodge Monaco that we are used to seeing Rosco and Enos drive, but it's better than nothing. Ertl first released the '74 Monaco as the Bluesmobile from the "Blues Brothers" and reused the molds for Rosco's Hazzard County Cruiser.
The back of the car has the same "mostly in cars" description that doesn't mention the General Lee or Rosco's car. The box features a picture of the toy, not a shot from the show, because this model car was not actually used on the show.
Using a 1974 model year instead of a 1978 is more or less forgivable. But the light bar used on this car is very un-Hazzardous. Never was a light bar with beacon flashers or "Kojak" style lights used on the show. This bar also has a large siren in the center.
Instead of adding the 83522 plate that was on Rosco's car, Joyride added a rebel flag to the rear of the car.
The front also has a rebel flag. The Hazzard County Patrol Cars did actually have a rebel flag in the front, but the 1978 Monacos had it in the center.
2007 also saw the final Dukes of Hazzard 1/18 diecast to bare the Joyride Logo. This is the fifth dirty General Lee. It has the same "dirt" on it as the Joyride box dirty General and the movie box dirty General.
With the end of the Joyride brand, we'll take a break. We are half way through all the Dukes of Hazzard 1/18 diecast cars. This is one heck of a ride. See you soon for post three in the series!
