It's finally time to complete a blog post that I've been talking about for since May of 2012. I've had this post in the back of my mind for long time, but never got to it because there was always a part of it that eluded me. Well, to the front of my mind it comes because I got that elusive piece and it's time for this post to shine. I present to you the Dukes of Hazzard Card Game, From The Makers of UNO! I've tracked down nearly all the variations and accessories and laid them all out. In this post, I'll not only show you my collection, but also teach you how to play this complicated little pastime. Let's play a game.
This game is a staple in most Dukes collections. It's not hard to find and can be rather inexpensive. If you have a bunch of Dukes stuff, chances are you have this game. I'm fortunate to have copies of the game open as well as in mint condition. This is my best example. It looks brand new. On the front we see The Duke cousins as well as Boss Hogg and a rather tiny General Lee. There is a not-so-standard Dukes logo and a bubble proclaiming "From The Makers of UNO." In the top corner, we see said makers, iGi's logo.
In preparation of this blog, I did a little research on the history of America's most popular family card game. It was created in 1971 by an Ohio barber named Merle Robbins, along with his wife, Marie and their family. I have family in Ohio named Robbins, weird. Merle and Marie's family enjoyed playing Crazy 8s with a standard deck of cards but all of the different house rules like skip and reverse, which were played using different face cards, got confusing and they started writing the rules directly on the cards. My sister used to do that when playing spades and once wrote on a deck of my X-Men playing cards and I was more than upset. Back to the Robbins family, once they had the rules written and straightened out, they realized they created a new game and tried their hand at marketing it. They gambled on themselves and printed 5,000 copies of their new game and sold it from their barber shop. It was an instant local hit. When a family friend, Bob Tezak, from Joliet, Illinois got involved and started International Games Incorporated (IGI) the game went coast to coast and was soon a national sensation. IGI declined offers to sell the rights to UNO for years and built it's own card game empire. That empire included the Dukes game, Skip-Bo, Catchword, Vantage, Grabitz, Color Bunch, Sting, spin-offs to UNO such as the UNO Wild Tiles board game and ONO '99 and other licensed games such as GI Joe, Gremlins, Sesame Street, and later Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In 1996, IGI was purchased by Mattel and UNO became bigger than ever. These days you can find versions of UNO with He-Man, Ghostbusters. The Olympics, Care Bears, SpongeBob, NFL, Avengers, Fraggle Rock, Fantastic Four, Coca-Cola, Barbie, Disney, Charlie Brown, Spider-Man and Superman. 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of UNO. That is totally why I waited to write this blog and not at all a huge coincidence. The licensed UNO games that Mattel makes are UNO games with characters on the cards and boxes. Before Mattel, when IGI was in charge, they created a new game for each license. The Dukes of Hazzard Card Game From The Makers of UNO isn't just a General Lee on a skip card; it's an entirely unique game with its own rules. Let's learn how to play.
The back of the package has an image of each card and gives an introduction to the game. It's described as "a wild, wacky fun game where you'll meet Bo, Luke and their friends as well as the Boss and his gang. There are Road Blocks, Speed Traps, Parking Tickets and much more in this fun filled, action packed 'Dukes' card game. Hours of fun for the whole family from the makers of UNO!"
I scanned the cards to share with the world. I usually don't put watermarks on my images, but I usually take my own pictures of products. These are scans of copywrited cards and I feel like it might be easy for the nefarious ne'er-do-wells of the internet to rip these off and do unscrupulous things with them. Not on my watch scoundrels! But, the readers who were raised by Uncle Jesse wouldn't so such a thing and can understand why I decided to add a watermark to these cards. The back of the cards have the same logo that's on the box. It reminds me more of the Sesame Street logo than Dukes logos we're used to. The background is red, not orange. These cards are distinctive and have a great look to them.
There are character cards and action cards. The character cards are similar to the number cards in UNO and the action cards are like the wild cards. The character cards are separated into good guys and bad guys. But c'mon, did we ever really see ol' Boss and Rosco as bad guys? Definitely not Cletus and Flash! The artwork used for these cards is great. It is exclusive to the cards and most likely created by iGi. It's some of the best and most realistic artwork of our beloved Dukes. The good guys have red letters and numbers and the bad guys have black. We'll go over the meaning of the point values soon when we discuss the rules. These images have been used on other non-licensed products over the years. I wonder if the originals are out there anywhere.
The action cards are a lot of fun. Boss Hogg is the man in charge around these here parts and whatever he says goes. Because of that he gets two great action cards. Hazzard County Clout shows ol' JD looming over his kingdom, the Hazzard County Courthouse. If the clout card shows Boss in all his glory, the Hogg Wild card shows the opposite. On this card, Boss is stomping his hat; which must be a result of his scheme being foiled by them Dukes, them Dukes! The other three cards show the Hazzard County Sheriff in action against the Dukes. There is an anonymous Sheriff's Deputy shown on the Road Block and the Parking Ticket cards. This deputy looks an awful lot like Rosco's dipstick himself, Enos Strate, but we all know that Sonny left the show to make his spinoff, Enos, before the merchandise boom and Cletus is more represented on our beloved Dukes Stuff. Cletus has his own bad guy card. I'm not sure why iGi didn't place Rosco or Cletus on these action cards. The Hazzard County Patrol Cars are nicely represented though. The artist did an excellent job on these cards. Except one thing. Where is the General Lee?!!?? Our most favorite car in the world is only shown on the Speed Trap card, and he is much smaller than the patrol car. It's a different image of the Gen'ral that's used on the card box, but even that is tiny compared to the Bo, Luke, Daisy and Boss. The iGi artist got so many details spot on, the characters look perfect, their outfits are great. Ok, Bo is wearing a red shirt instead of yellow, but I'll let that slide because Cooter is wearing a Red Rose hat! Even the courthouse looks just like it does in Hazzard. I just can't figure out why the General Lee is so underutilized. The Gen'ral could be given it's own character card and no one would have doubted the reasoning behind it. It's a mystery.
Along with scanning the cards, I scanned the instructions that came with the card game. The instructions are 10 pages long. The instructions start out with "A wild, wacky, fun card game that the folks from Hazzard County would be proud of." They then go on to lay out the rules in very detailed fashion. They also mention that you should take score using "pencil and paper on an Official 'Dukes of Hazzard' Score Pad available at most toy/game departments." More on that later. A few years ago, in preparation for the Dukes of Hazzard Fan Get Together that I hosted at Cooter's in Luray, I rewrote the rules in a way that I think is a little more straight forward. The game basically combines UNO with Rummy. The winner is the first person to reach five hundred points. Points are gained by being the first to "go out" meaning you discard or meld all your cards. I wrote up a two sheet instructions and example of melds that I laid out at the event. The sheets are below.
I also included a handy pdf file of both of these pages that you can easily print out to help when playing at home.
So basically it's like UNO where the action cards are similar to the wild cards, Road Block is like Reverse, Speed Trap is like Skip, Parking Ticket is like Draw Two and Hogg Wild is like Draw Four. The Hazzard County Clout card is unique; it cancels out the action card used on the player using it. If the the opposing player uses a Parking Ticket and you cancel it with a Clout card, the opposing player must draw two, instead of you. If they use a Speed Trap to skip you, a Clout card can be used so you are not skipped and they are skipped on their next turn. That would be a handy card in a regular of UNO. "No, Bill, I will not Draw Four, I'm using my Clout card and you have to Draw Four, and the color is now red!" Unlike in UNO, the character cards are used to "meld" which is similar to Rummy. Melding is basically forming a set. You can either do three or more of one card, like three Cooters, or three or more of one character group, good guys or bad guys. You can't meld Daisy, Daisy and Uncle Jesse, even though they are all good guys, and you can also not meld Boss, Rosco, Cletus, Flash, and Boss. That would be too many Bosses though we could all see Boss trying to get away with that. The first person to "go out" which means they've either melded or discarded all their cars gets a fifty point bonus. Then they count all their melded cards point values. Bo, Luke, Rosco and Boss are the ten point cards, while Daisy, Uncle Jesse, Cooter, Cletus and Flash are each worth five points. The other players add their meld points together then deduct the combined point value of all the cards they're still holding. That's why the action cards have negative points on them. Unlike UNO, each player has the opportunity to gain points after each round. In UNO, only the person who went out gets points. But in the Dukes game, you have the chance of getting negative points if the value of the cards you are holding is greater than the cards you've melded.
Got all that? Ready to move on from iGi's kinda complicated rules and look at more cool Dukes toys? Me too. Onward!
I mentioned earlier that I was waiting to write this blog because there was something out there that I didn't have. This is it! It's the store display box! I finally tracked one down and it was worth the wait! I've seen a few sell on eBay and I've got outbid a few times. The last one I saw came complete with twenty-four sealed packs of the game. That was how it was originally shipped to retailers. It went for big money. This one was missing twenty-three of its card packs. That was all right by me as I really only wanted the box. I got my own packs to put in it.
The box uses the same design as the pack. It has the same artwork and logo. The box also advertises the action cards by having underlined exclamations saying Speed Traps!, Road Blocks!, Hazzard County Clout!, Parking Tickets!, and A Really Wild Boss Hogg! The bottom says "It's Wild And Wacky." iGi really wanted everyone to know they considered this game wacky.
The sides have the same picture as the backboard and the card pack.
I love this box so much. I'm so happy I finally added one to the collection. It really put the cherry on top of the Dukes card game mini-collection.
I don't have twenty-four copies of the game, but I did buy a bunch of opened and not perfect sets for the event I hosted at Cooter's. I'm always ready to play the game as well as show off my sealed sets. I have three sealed sets and five open boxes. They fit perfectly in the box. Jess got me another set for my birthday this year, and I'm really glad she did because it gave me an even number of sets and makes everything fit into the box so perfectly, thanks again Jess! I also have other versions of the game I will discuss below. I love how perfectly they all fit into this box. Did I mention I love this box?
Let's go back to the standard box. A lot of Dukes items from the golden era have slight variations. I have a Knickbocker Speed Jumper set with a yellow ramp and one with a black ramp, slide puzzles and puffy stickers come in Dukes specific packaging and in generic packaging, and there are tons of variations in Mego's Dukes of Hazzard line (another big blog post I've put off for far too long.) I figured there might be some differences in the Dukes card game. Luckily I have several different examples to inspect.
This is all four sides of the box. It has pretty much a variation of the same design on each side.
While taking this picture I noticed that some of the boxed have "® 1981 International Games Inc. Joliet, IL 60435" on the side while some don't. They all have No. 1025 on the bottom corner. It's fun to find these little differences. My guess is one of the packages was a earlier print run. I'm glad to have the two different versions.
For some reason the card game didn't only come sealed in the box. It was also sold on a blister pack. Some stores would have the above display box on a shelf while other stores would have the game hanging on a peg in an aisle. It's the same same game and box inside the blister pack, and the blister pack resembles the design of the display box.
The front and back of the blister pack have the same quotes as the top of the display box. And you better believe iGi took another opportunity to call the game wild and wacky. All of the text is the same as what's on the back of the box.
I have one of each version with the 1981 Joliet information on the side and one of each without. Very cool.
A third and more rare packaged version of the game is on a blister pack, but without the card box inside. The blister pack is the same as the more common box inside version.
The back of the card is the same too.
I'm not sure why this version exists. It's a little subtle and might not know it's a Dukes card game similar to UNO if you saw it hanging on the shelf. I've considered two reasons for this package's existence. It is very rare and this is the only one I've ever seen. That being said, it might be an error package that somehow got through the assembly line without a box.
But I don't think that's the case because looking at the side, you can see that behind the sealed packs of cards is the instructions. I doubt everything besides the box would make it through inspection. My guess is this is an expansion pack or basically extra cards. Maybe Katie and Faye also got into a fight while playing this game. Faye might have used a Hazzard County Clout to block Katie's Parking Ticket which caused her to draw two more cards right after she melded three Daisy cards and thought she was going out. This might have upset Katie, because she is used to UNO which doesn't have a Clout card and she didn't see it coming, and she might have thrown the cards at Faye out of anger. They were playing at Katie's parent's house and not Faye's, because Faye's mom knew the Dukes card game was from the maker's of UNO (it's all over the box.) Katie's parent's house is also my parent's house, she is my sister after all, and when she threw her cards at Faye, Faye ducked and the cards landed right in Sam's dog dish. Sam was my childhood dog and he was awesome. He happened to be eating at the time and he wasn't about to let some Dukes of Hazzard cards stop him from enjoying his Purina Dog Chow so he chomped down on the Flash and Cooter cards that ended up in his bowl. So having lost some of the Dukes cards that we all know would make Little Larry (me) pretty upset, Katie, Faye, and my Mom would have to go to Fisher Big Wheel or Toy City to buy some more cards. That's where I think this non-box blister pack fits in the to story. Makes sense to me.
Earlier I quoted the instructions that mentioned you could either take score using pencil and paper or the Official Dukes of Hazzard Score Pad. This has become an extremely rare part of the little Dukes UNO game collection. I've had this gem in the collection for a long time and don't remember actually tracking it down. I know I've only seen a few appear on ebay over the years. My example is sealed. The design is similar to the card box and the display box, but it does have some interesting differences. Instead of naming the action cards like Hazzard County Clout, there's a yellow bubble the says "Autographed Suitable for FRAMING." This is a fun addition. What's more fun is the autographs aren't from Catherine, John, Tom, and Sorrell, but actually from Daisy, Bo, Luke, and Boss Hogg. It's an "in universe" item that means they person who obtained the autographs thought highly enough of the citizens of Hazzard to ask them to sigh their score pad. I would love to know thought process behind this design. iGi designers figured the players of the game will eventually use up all the double sided score sheets and consider discarding the entire package. But because they included the autographs and perforated the score pad label, the Dukes loving card player might cherish this part of the score pad forever. That is some sound logic and I back it completely. I'm really glad I have this rare addition to the Dukes UNO legacy.
But the Score Pad is not the rarest addition to the collection. Technically, the store display box above is, but if we're talking about commercially released items, the UNO Sears Family Fun pack takes top prize as the rarest Dukes card game family member. I first wrote about this mult-game pack back when I added it to the collection in 2016. I first saw one on ebay about fifteen years ago and was outbid on it. I didn't see another until five years ago when I won the auction for this one. I haven't seen one since. It's super rare. iGi put their top games into one big package and let Sears sell them together. My guess is this four-pack of games was bundled for Christmas time and was probably seen in one of the ever popular Sears Christmas Book.
I couldn't help myself and I searched online for the listing. It appears in the 1982 Sears Christmas Book. That's a heck of a bundle for $9.99.
The bundle packaging has a circus theme. I guess it's a circus because it's a tent. Maybe it's a camping theme. Camping would be a better place to play these games then the circus, but the flag on top of the tent and the balloons really give off a circus vibe. All four games are listed on the package insert.
The circus (camping?) theme is carried out throughout the packaging. The back of the box is blank. Sears really picked some great games for this Fun-Pack. I'm only saying that because I'm a fan of UNO and the Dukes is always a great pick. I know nothing about ONO'99 and Catchword. If Catchword is anything like UpWords, which it doesn't appear to be at all, then me and my Mom will love it. I'll never open this package or buy another copy of it to figure it out.
So I found all these different versions of the game and the Score Pad and the display box and figured I'd tracked down everything. Then I visited your buddy and mine, Dave DeWitt. Good ol' Dave, like he usually does, had an amazing piece that blew me away.
Dave has a version of the game that's distributed by Valentine Greetings under authority of iGi Limited. I really don't know that that means. I tried to Google Valentine Greetings but it's such a common name that all I got from the search was results about Valentine's Day greetings cards. My guess is it's a foreign release, most likely from the U.K. I figured it's not from Canada because most Dukes items from Canada are bi-lingual in English and French. It might also be from Australia. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. The search continues. I have to find this unique version of the card game. Did it only come wrapped, or in a blister pack? I just don't know. Dave's copy is open so neither of us know. I tried to lay down all the knowledge about the Dukes of Hazzard Card Game From The Makers of UNO, but I don't have all the answers.
I got myself a little obsessed with UNO while preparing this blog post. I have that 1979 deck I pictured earlier. When I found it, there was also a UNO Score Pad with it. Then I thought about the couple other versions I have. I got an Avengers set for my birthday a few years ago. Then I remembered I bought my sister a giant deck of UNO card for Christmas that were around here somewhere. I don't think she's ever played this version with Faye. That might be disastrous. I've been buying a lot of Masters of the Universe stuff this year and when I saw there was He-Man UNO, I couldn't pass it up. And when looking for the UNO 50th Anniversary edition image I used above, I saw that the 50th Anniversary edition was highly discounted at Walmart and it came with an awesome UNO coin so I bought that set too. I guess I have quite a little UNO collection going.
This has been a long blog. I really enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoyed reading it. Here's a picture of my Dukes of Hazzard Card Game From The Makers of UNO collection as well as my budding UNO collection. It was a lot of fun playing with all these cards. Like I said before, I have several "playing decks" of the Dukes card game. If you ever want to play the game, and can figure out all those wild and wacky rules, meet up with me at Cooter's or come on over to the DukesCollector headquarters and I'll deal you in!