Ready to follow me down another rabbit hole? Let's take a look at one of the staples of any Dukes of Hazzard collection. I'm willing to guess that nearly anyone who started collecting Dukes stuff in the '80s, '90s, 2000s, or the 2010s has at least one Unisonic Dukes item in their collection. A few of these pieces are some of the most common Dukes items out there. And one or two are so rare that I don't even have them. This post is dedicated to all things Dukes of Hazzard Unisonic.
Unisonic Products Corporation was an electronics company that existed from the '70s until the '90s. Besides Dukes, the company made standard calculators and watches as well as other licensed items such as Mickey Mouse phones. In the late '70s they made a few home video game consoles similar to Atari's Home Pong. They also made that one clear telephone that everyone's older sister had. You know the one.
We all remember the clear phone.
But, like most posts on the ol' DukesCollector blog, this post is about Dukes of Hazzard. The Dukes Unisonic products are a huge part of Dukes collecting. Before we look at each piece, I want to discuss these four pieces. These items were first manufactured in 1981, they made their splash in the '90s. After the
golden era had come to a close, and right around the time the show was making its monumental comeback on TNN to usher in the silver era, these four watches were everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I can remember going to the Pittsburgh Comic Con and was so excited to see a few watches at one of the first tables we saw. I bought one of each. Then every other table had them. Soon after, I saw them at hobby stores and comic shops. This was around the beginning of ebay. I think the huge impact that Dukes had on early ebay was because of these Dukes watches. Every other item that was listed back then was one of these watches. The explanation as to why these watches were everywhere is easy to figure out. At some point in the mid-90s, cases upon cases of these items were discovered. Older stock that some wholesaler didn't sell during the original Dukes boom paid off when the show came back. The items weren't expensive and readily available. Because of that, all of us collectors added them to our stockpile. I've seen so many fellow fanatic's collections that have these four watches front and center. They are great pieces and were definitely integral to my budding collection way back when. You still see entire cases of these watches offered today. These four pieces that are in most Dukes collections are only a portion of what Unisonic provided to Dukes fans. Let's look at these and all the Unisonic Dukes of Hazzard items.
Before we get to the watches, first we'll look at the calculators. The first one is officially called The Dukes of Hazzard LCD Calculator. It's on a blister card and has great graphics on the package. The General Lee is jumping over the rebel flag and the font is the familiar style. The card also features a filmstrip style collection of pictures similar to the design of Ertl's packages. This style is on nearly all of the Unisonic items.
The back of the package is blank.
The calculator itself is battery powered, not solar like modern calculators. The Dukes logo is present as well as a graphic of the Gen'ral jumping over Rosco and Enos crashing. This graphic is used on other items such as the
Dukes sneakers. Many of these items, but not all, have serial numbers on them. This calculator is DH-2122.
Next is another carded calculator. This one shares the same official name as the one above. This card is larger and so is the calculator. The first one uses a smaller watch battery that's included with the calculator. This one uses two AA batteries that aren't included. To fit those batteries, it needs to be pretty bulky.
Again, the back is blank.
The graphics are similar but some of the colors are different. This one is DH-2103
The third calculator is labeled as the Dukes of Hazzard Auto Shut Off. But its number is aslo DH-2103. It appears to be the same as the larger carded version, just in a box.
I think it's funny that this box doesn't have the word "calculator" on it at all. As we will see with the watches, Unisonic was fond of packaging the same item in different ways. Unisonic wanted to make sure Dukes fans could do two things: arithmetic and tell time. Now that we have three different math tools, let's look at the time pieces. There's a lot of them.
Let's start with the weirdest one. The Dukes of Hazzard Stick-Up Digital Clock. Everything Unisonic made is digital. There are no analog clocks here. The package to this one doesn't have any pictures, just graphics. The General Lee is fleeing Rosco on two wheels. The clock features month, date, hours, minutes, and seconds. I take for granted how easy it is to tell time now. Everything has a clock on it. I could tell you exactly how long it takes me to walk from my basement to my bedroom because the three cables boxes I pass all have clocks in them as well as the smart speaker, portable phone, microwave and stove. Watches and clocks were different back then and having the ability to display seconds as well as the date was a selling point. The package suggests you could stick the clock on your bike, desk and bookbag.
The Stick-Up Clock has info on the back of the card. That's a lot of instructions for setting a clock. The clock doesn't have a serial number on the package.
The clock itself is pretty small. It has a shrunken down version of the same General Lee on two wheels graphic on it and the Dukes logo. It's always Dukes time when using this clock.
Dukes time? Wow. Ok, I'm going to stick with that. It's Dukes time when using all the Unisonic time pieces. Next up is probably the rarest Unisonic item. Well, one of the rarest considering there is technically something I don't have in this collection; more on that later. I don't have the package for this one, and I've never seen it. It's the Dukes of Hazzard Digital Pocket Watch. Dave DeWitt told me he saw the package way back when and it uses the same theme as the other Unisonic items, which makes sense. The pocket watch in his collection is loose as well. I like to think the designer at Unisonic modeled this watch after Boss Hogg's pocket watch that was the center of his scheme against the Duke Boys in my favorite episode, Ghost of General Lee. That's probably not true and they probably had a digital pocket watch in production and slapped some Dukes graphics on it, but I'm sticking with my Boss Hogg theory. It's more fun. We're going to be seeing a lot of this General Lee skiing image.
The back of the pocket watch is engraved "base metal bezel British Hong Kong." It also has a little engraved rectangle that is surprisingly ornate. There's nothing inside the rectangle and I wonder if someone's name or initials were supposed to go there. Maybe Unisoninc intended these time pieces to be personalized which seems like it would have been a little expensive and out of the price range of kids buying Dukes watches. Maybe down the line someone just added this little engraving to only my watch. Dave, does yours have this out of place little rectangle on it? Strange. I'm not sure if this watch originally came with a chain or string to hang from. I only recently added this piece to the collection and was more or less waiting to write a blog about Unisonic items until I found it. I'm glad it finally found its way to the collection and that I could finally write about these fun time keepers and math makers.
Ok, now we're getting into the meat of this story. The wrist watches. We've covered the outliers in the Unisonic collection. We can add and multiply with the calculators and tell time on our bikes, backpacks, and in out pockets. But when I say Dukes of Hazzard Unisonic, most people think of these wristwatches and their different clamshells and long boxes. These are the main Unisoninc Dukes items. It's Dukes time! First we'll look at the clamshell box watches. This is the LCD Quartz Watch in Metal Case With Stainless Band. That's a mouthful. This is one of the four items that were everywhere in the mid '90s. The watch itself feels high quality with it's heavy metal band.
The watch comes in a very nice clamshell box. It's made of plastic and features several Dukes designs. The inside of the box features a felt like lined bottom that has The Dukes of Hazzard printed in gold. There is a sticker behind the watch. Unisonic went all out with the presentation of these watches.
The watch itself features the General Lee on a two wheels image. The rebel flag is there along with the logo. It's just a great looking watch.
The box closes to feature a sticker on the front of the Gen'ral in flight and another sticker on top.
Unisonic didn't stop there. There is another cardboard box that the plastic box slips into.
This box has the filmstrip design with pictures of the Duke Boys, the General Lee, Rosco, and Boss Hogg.
The outer box also shows off the long name of the watch.
The serial number DH-126 is on the bottom of the outer box.
Next up is the second of the big four that were everywhere back then. This is the LCD Quartz Watch in Metal Case With Stainless Band With Dixie Melody Alarm.
It comes in a similar clamshell with the Dukes printed on the black part. The design of the watch is flipped, the cars are on top and the flag and logo are on the bottom. It has an additional button that's very important. This watch plays dixie! Back when I first added one of these to the early collection, I put a battery in it and listened to that sweet MIDI tune. The early '80s technology didn't allow for a super lush sound. This wasn't blaring from four horns under the hood of a Charger, it basically sounded like the ColecoVision version of the horn or the Coleco Pedal Car horn.
Both of which can be heard in this post. I didn't put any batteries in these watches to test the sounds, so your going to have to take my word for it. You could set the alarm to play at a certain time or hold the button down whenever you wanted to hear it. I do remember that it didn't just play the first twelve bars of dixie, like the Gen'ral's horn, but continued to play the entire first verse of the song. I liked to stop it at the right time by letting go of the button. When I was growing up, I didn't really know the song Dixie outside of the Dukes. I remember listening to the rest of it on the watch and then figuring out that was the same tune Bugs Bunny hummed often in his cartoons. It's weird how a kid's mind puts things together.
The box is similar to the non-dixie version, but not the same.
Instead of the General Jumping graphic, the front of the plastic box has the rebel flag image with the characters and the General Lee that is used on the album cover and the shoe boxes. It also features Dixie, Rosco's car, and Boss's Caddy. This is a great piece of artwork, but for some reason it's barely ever seen in its entirety, it's usually oddly cropped. We get the whole version here, but just very small.
The slip case/outer box also features a larger version of the image, but it's cropped.
There are music notes on the slip case that make it easier to recognize as the musical version.
Unisonic ditched the filmstrip design on this one. Maybe they used this image because it was also the album cover and wanted to associate this watch with music. Maybe I am reading into it too much. The musical watch does not have a serial number. For a long time I thought there were the only two watches that came in a clamshell. Then I found the following doozy!
Behold! The Dukes of Hazzard Multi Car Game Watch! This is crazy! So far we've just been content on Unisonic letting us complete calculations and tell time. Now we get to drive the General Lee in a race against the bad guy all while eluding Boss Hogg and Rosco to save the farm! Or stare at blinking dots as they move around a larger watch screen. Pre-Nintendo video games left a lot to the imagination. We knew that Unisonic attempted to take on Atari for dominancy in the home video game console wars. Well, they also attempted to put a game on your wrist long before Nintendo released the Gameboy. Ok, Nintendo did have their Game and Watch series a few years before this watch came out, but this watch beat Tiger Games to the punch.
If you're familar with Tiger Electronics Games, those handheld little games from the '90s, I think this game is similar. I've never put a battery in it to try it out, but I can't imagine it's at all fun. The four buttons on the sides are labeled, select, rotate, game select, and speed. My watch doesn't have instructions. There's a video of someone playing one on youtube, but it's just someone hitting buttons while the dots on the screen move around the little grid. I'm sure there isn't much more to the game, but the video isn't even worth checking out. The watch face does not have a General Lee image as it's nearly all LCD. The game watch is one of the rarest Unisonic items.
The plastic portion of the box is nearly identical to the plastic portion of the above non-musical steel watch. The only difference is the game watch is showing the date of 1982, where the steel watch has 1981.
The slip case is different than the other two though. I find it odd, but the slip case has less detail. It's simply called LCD Quartz Watch. It doesn't mention the state of the art video game mechanics that make this game so different. This is the least detailed of the three slip cases.
It's very strange that this box makes no mention of the game inside. There is no serial number for this one either.
These are the three different clam shell boxes.
Ok, Unisonic basically did two different things for Dukes fans, math and time. (There's the game watch but that tells time too) So would you're mind be blown if they also combined those two functions into one product?!?! Well consider it blown, because Unisonic also made a calculator watch!!! Whoa!!!
Now let's start by saying I'm 99% sure that this is the incorrect box for this watch. This watch is in a plastic clamshell box with no slip case that's identical to the musical steel watch. I'm pretty sure someone had this watch boxless and found an easy to find box to put it in. This could be the rarest Unisonic item. Every once in a while some become available with no box, probably like this one. It actaully comes in a gray long box that's different from all the other long boxes, that are red. What's a long box you ask? As Waylon says, stay tuned. This is the one item missing from my collection, the calculator watch in its actual box. There's a one percent chance that this watch actually came in this box, but I highly doubt it. None of the plastic watches came in clamshells. It is a super cool watch though. It tells time and does division! You can check how long until lunch and figure out how many pizzas you need for the party (2.5 slices per person times 24 people divided by 8 slices per pie equals 7.5 pizzas, let's just go with 8. Thanks Dukes Calculator watch!) I think my favorite part is the die-cut image of the General Lee behind all the buttons.
Here's pictures of the box even though I'm sure it isn't the correct box.
Now we're moving on from the clamshell boxes. The third of the big four I keep mentioning is the LCD Quartz Watch on card. This is the most basic watch. It has a plastic band. The package shares the design of the other items with the Jumpin' Gen'ral graphic and the filmstrip design.
The back of the card features a bunch of instructions. I really feel like someone other than me should read how much was put into the description. It reads:
"Your LCD digital quartz watch with its unique command system, is a possession that you can be proud of for its superb accuracy, design and features. It is a result of advanced micro miniaturization and micro electronic technologies.
Your LCD digital quartz watch is a revolutionary electronic wrist watch with no moving parts. It incorporates a quartz crystal oscillator, an integrated circuit and a liquid crystal display to indicate time and calendar functions. It also contains an electronic circuit which automatically adjusts for even and odd months (except February for leap year) and a rapid adjustment system to set these functions. A built-in light illuminates each function display in the dark. The exceptional accuracy of your LCD digital quartz watch is the result of the highly stable oscillators of the quartz crystal, which is carefully cut to the most exact specifications and aged to assure the most stable oscillations over a long period of time."
That is one heck of a description. Advanced Micro Miniaturization? Rapid Adjustment System? Aged crystals? You are out of luck during a leap year though. They put that much into the most basic watch, but didn't even describe the game watch on the package?
DH-1001B is the serial number.
If that's 1001B, there must be a 1001, right? Right. This is the final of the big four that was everywhere. The first of the "long box watches," this is the LCQ Quartz Watch that is the basic watch. Besides the above mentioned gray long box that I don't own, all of the watches that come in long boxes have very similar designs. There is a flap that shows Bo and Luke on the inside and lists the watch features.
The watch also has the skiing Gen'ral design. The flag and logo are on top.
Bo and Luke sure are happy you bought this time piece.
The top of the flap features a more detailed graphic of the General Lee jumping over Hazzard County's finest. It also features the filmstrip, the logo, and the flag.
There is also a slip case that has the same image on it as the top of the flap. Unisonic really put a lot into their presentation.
The box fits right into the slip case.
The same watch comes both in a long box and on a card.
This is serial number DH-1001.
Next is a weird one. This is basically the same as the previous watch, but one huge difference. It has a big ol' white ring on the face.
The box is identical except for the serial number.. The other watches feature "TM and © WB 1981" on the face. This one says Warner Bros. Inc. instead of just WB. Maybe that's the reason this one was released, Warner Bros. might have wanted their full name on the product. That's just a guess. This is a rarer variant.
The white faced watch is serial number DH-1001A.
The long boxes didn't just contain plastic watches. For a long time I thought the dixie melody watch only came in a clamshell. Ebay taught me different.
The box labels this as The Dukes of Hazzard LCD Quartz Watch in Metal Case With Stainless Band With Dixie Melody Alarm. That's a bigger mouthful. You might be thinking it's just the same melody watch that came in the clamshell, just in a long box.
Nope. That melody watch has the General Lee above the display and the logo below. This one is flipped.
The box is pretty much the same except for the different text. Slip case too.
It's serial number DH-1010.
Now we have a nearly identical watch, just no dixie melody feature.
The watch is identical to the above watch.
The only difference is the lack of melody description.
These watches look like the same watch.
This one has a different serial number than the rest, it's LC125. I'm guessing the DH means Dukes of Hazzard; I wonder what the LC stands for.
Next up is the second rarest long box watch; the gray calculator being the rarest. This is the octagon dixie melody watch. The box is the same as the other dixie long box watch.
The octagon name refers to the shape of the face. It also has the Gen'ral graphic on the bottom which is opposite of the most common dixie watch that comes in the clamshell. I didn't know about this one until a few years ago. When the first one surfaced on ebay, it caused a stir and fetched big money. I was able to get one for a better price once the dust settled. I think a lot of them have sold without the seller knowing it is a rarer version. Keep you eyes peeled and you can probably get one for a good price.
The box and serial number are identical to the standard dixie long box watch.
We made it to the end. This was a long one. So let's review. The Unisonic Dukes of Hazzard collection consists of fifteen different items. There's three calculators, and twelve watches. One of the watches is actually called a clock, even though it's pretty tiny. Only nine of the watches are wrist watches. One comes on a card, six come in a long box and three come in a clamshell, though I have a long box watch in a clamshell. Three watches play dixie, one plays a game, and one is also a calculator. That's a pretty impressive lineup that Uniconic gave us. Much better than some old clear telephone. Now I have to get my hands on that gray box for my calculator watch!
But what if you wanted the style of the Unisonic watch with today's modern technology? You're in luck! You can be just like me if you own an Android smart watch. I'm rocking this sweet Unisonic Dukes inspired watch face on my Fossil Gen 5 Wear Os watch.
I found this awesome watch face on the Facer app a while ago and love it. I had to include it in this post. I don't own an Apple Watch so I don't know if there's anything similar on that platform.
I really enjoy these kinds of posts where I discuss a mini-collection within my Dukes collection. I'm glad I was able to get all the Unisonic pieces together and I hope you enjoyed reading about them. Remember, it's always Dukes time around here!
No comments:
Post a Comment