I haven't done a New Dukes Stuff blog in a long time. Let's change that. Here's a bunch of things I've bought recently.
First up is an odd addition. It's a VHS five-pack called Hollywood's Funniest All Star Bloopers. It features outtakes and bloopers from dozens of TV shows, movies, and special events.
The set comes in a larger box and the tapes are sealed individually.
The only tape that has the wrapping removed is the only tape I care about. Along side Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, the Beetles and Elvis, there's a collection of Dukes outtakes included. Bo and Luke, in a colorized black and white photo, are on the top of one of the tapes.
The Duke Boys also made it on the side of their tape. I'm sure the other five tapes are full of laughs, but I'll never open them. If I had bought this set and it the blue tape wasn't previously opened, I would have left it sealed, but since I happen to have a VHS capture and editing station set up, I had to throw the tape in and watch the Dukes. I couldn't leave you, my faithful readers, out of the fun, so I captured the outtakes and posted them. Check them out: ***adult language warning***
2:22 of rarely seen Dukes goodness. Honestly, that could have been funnier. I'm sure there were funnier moments captured during production, but maybe this was all that WB kept. It sure would be great to find more Dukes outtakes one day. I watched a little bit of the rest of the tape and it includes MASH, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke, and Johnny Carson bloopers on them, and they were all funnier than the Dukes footage. I didn't see any Wonder Woman, even though she's on the artwork. The package has a copyright date of 1998 on the bottom, but on this video, it says 1987. I'm sure these five tapes were collected in the late '90s, but have been floating around for over a decade before. The whole presentation just screams late night infomercial to me. I'm glad someone watching reruns on the Dukes on TNN called the 800 number on the screen and bought this set and then listed it on ebay twenty-five years later so I could add it to my Dukes collection. I love how that stuff works out.
Next up is another bygone era impulse buy. This is TV Super Stars '81. I would guess this was for sale at the check-out aisle at your local grocer. It's about the size of a small paperback novel and features John and Catherine on the cover below Loni Anderson, Tony Danza, and a kid I don't recognize.
Though Luke didn't make the cover, he's still in the book. This isn't the flashiest Dukes collectible, but I'm happy to have it in the collection.
Next up is a pin that says "I love the Dukes of Hazzard." I may have already shown this one off on a previous blog post, but I do love the Dukes of Hazzard and I like to let everyone know.
Here are a few more pins that are a lot of fun. These are campaign pins for Ben Cooter Jones' political career. These are from Ben's successful runs for the United States Congress in Georgia's Fourth Congressional District. I need to find some more items from Ben's time in politics.
Now this is something different. You may remember the fourth season episode "The Sound of Music - Hazzard Style." In it, Country Music Legend Mickey Gilley performs two songs. His performances aren't the standard celebrity speed trap type concerts where singers like Roy Orbison and the Oak Ridge Boys appeared, but Mickey's time on the show saw him be a part of the plot, similar to the season two episode "Find Loretta Lynn." This copy of the official Mickey Gilley Fan Club Newsletter was released prior to his appearance and lets fans of Mickey know about his then upcoming appearance. This is a rare find.
The newsletter includes some great behind the scenes photos and talks about Mickey's time on set. This is a really unique and fun piece that I'm really glad I was able to find.
These are press photographs sent out by CBS and TNN to promote the show and reunion movie. Press photos seem cooler to me than standard 8x10 pictures, because anyone can print an 8x10 but these are period specific and usually have dates and studio info attached.
The first one features our cousins looking ready to save the day. The back has a blurb about the specific episode and has the date stamped. It's from August, 1984 and discusses the season six premiere "Lulu's Gone Away." It also says "Rebroadcast" which makes sense because that episode originally aired in September of '83. It's a little confusing though, because it mentions that the episode will be shown, as a rerun, on Friday, September 17 and doesn't have a year. But in 1984, Sept. 17 was a Monday, and the 17th fell on a Friday in 1982, before that episode was produced. Weird little mystery to figure out.
These two were released by TNN to promote the Dukes during the silver era. I have a similar one showing the famous tree group shot that has a different blub crediting the cast.
This one discusses a Dukes marathon planned for the day after Thanksgiving. It mentions Friday, November 27 which means it was from 1998. I love the Friday after Thanksgiving. I'm sure in 1998 I was eating stuffing and watching the Dukes all day and couldn't have been happier.
The second one appears to be earlier than what I considered to be one of the first pieces of the silver era of Dukes collecting. I thought the previous TNN press photo that I linked to above was earlier, but this press photo has the older TNN guitar logo and mentions 1996 in a way to suggests it's from 1995. TNN started airing the Dukes on February 5, 1996. This might be the first item produced in the silver era. If you don't remember, the eras of Dukes of Hazzard collecting are something I totally made up but have been used by other collectors and Dukes enthusiasts since. The golden era was during the show's initial run and the silver era started when TNN brought the show back and everyone fell in love with it again. We are currently in the modern era.
Speaking of silver era, the final press photo in this post is from one of the biggest events in that era, the Dukes reunion movie.
This press photo was sent out in March of 1997 and promoted the airing of the reunion movie on CBS on April 25, 1997. The reunion movie was so much fun. It's crazy to think we are currently seven years farther away from the reunion movie than the reunion movie was from the premiere episode. Dukes of Hazzard Forever!
Next up are a couple of random magazines that I've picked up.
First is The Bluprinter dated, oddly enough, April 1997. That was a big month. The Blueprinter was a newsletter about products released by AMT and Ertl. I had no idea it existed until I found this one.
The writers of the magazine did a nice job telling the Gen'ral's backstory, straight from "Happy Birthday General Lee" and also mention that the model kit is one of the best selling ever. The paragraph discusses the resurgence of popularity of the Dukes and described the original model kit as "renowned." I like this article. I wish the General would have gotten more coverage in the magazine though. The picture used on the cover and the article is fun.
Here's the info about the specific issue of the Blueprinter.
The next magazine is super random. This is entitled "Basic Bradley T. V. Themes, Arraigned by Richard Bradley." It's a collection of sheet music for popular '70s and '80s shows.
Included ate Mork and Mindy, Happy Days and the Fact of Life.
But of course the reason I bought it is because it included Good 'Ol Boys and the artwork on the cover has a sorta-General Lee on it along with an almost Love Boat and Mork's egg shaped space shit.
Aside from the wacky cover, the book has music that I'm going to have to just trust would play Waylon's theme. I have no idea how to read music.
Included is the single specific "You know my momma loves me" part of the song.
The third magazine is one I've seen floating around ebay for years but never pulled the plug on. It's Hot Rod Show World 1982 Annual. It features a great picture of the General Lee and a model.
Inside features an even better picture of the General Lee. We all know that older car magazines included models as much as they did cars, but I think this picture might have been better without the blonde Daisy wannebe leaning on the General. Little things about this replica that are sticking out to me are the inclusion of the radio antenna and the white lettering on the tires. Other than that, it's a great non-Warner produced car.
The blurb mentions that this car was a part of the International Championship Auto Shows tour. Many fans probably saw this actual car at different car shows back then. I wonder what become of this beauty. The car that is.
Moving on from magazines, we have a couple advertising sheets.
The first one features a familiar image of our cousins with a blue background.
The back features info about the show and a list of licensees associated with the Dukes. It has a date of 2001 on it and Warner Bros Consumer Products info. It appears this was sent by WB to potential product manufactures and probably lead to some of the great early 2000s products that I've blogged about. This is a great piece of Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia that's responsible for Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia. It all goes full circle.
The other one isn't that colorful and was made for similar reasons. It was sent to exhibitors to promote the movie. I love out of the box items like this.
Here's a few foreign DVDs. As seen in these two posts, here and here, I love buying Dukes media from around the world.
The first one is actually a French copy of the Playstation 2 video game. In France the Dukes is called Sherif Fais Moi Peur. In the link posted above, I showed off my three French Playstation 1 games and my French X-Box version of Return of the General Lee, but I never picked up the PS2 version, until now.
Everything is in French except the writing on the disc. Interesting.
Next are two Australian DVD samples. I'm not one hundred percent sure who that target was for this sample, but I know it wasn't the general public as the top says for promotional use only, not for sale. Those words really get collectors like me excited. This DVD celebrated fifty years of Warner Bros Television in 2005.
The sample it titled "The Best of TV on DVD" and is pretty accurate. It has "One Armed Bandits" which we know is the premiere episode of the Dukes along with episodes of Gilligan's Island, Dallas, Friends, and the OC. That's quite a line up. Man, I loved the OC during the first two seasons.
The DVD was released by WB and The Sun Herald in Australia. Maybe it was packed in with the weekly entertainment newspaper. I don't know how many were produced but I'm glad I got one. I wish the last two seasons on the OC were as good as the first two.
The other one is called a DVD screener and has that pesky Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning on it. I normally like to disassociate with that horrible movie, but I do own just about every version of it and have some collectibles to go along with it. I guess I collect it, but I just make sure to say I hate it and wish it didn't exist when I discuss it. It's a really bad movie. This WB Insider September 2007 DVD has the movie along with the first episode of Big Love on it.
This appears to have been sent out to DVD retailers because it has information on when to order the full copies of the movie and the first season of Big Love. It's interesting the it says "portions of the film will turn black and white periodically for screening purposes." I'm sure that was to fight piracy. If a pirated copy turned up online and had blank and white portions, WB would know where it came from. Good for you WB, fight those pesky pirates!
Both of these samples come from our friends down under. I've never seen this sort of media here in America. Is this common in Australia? I wonder if there are more Dukes samples out there? I must find them!
This is a Canadian version of the movie that I didn't have. It's unique because a widescreen version of the non-unrated, meaning the standard theatrical version, was not released in the US. The theatrical cut of the movie was only released in "full-screen" format. Both widescreen and full-screen are standard definition. The movie was only released in high def on HD-DVD which is a dead format. The movie has never been released in Blu-ray. Weird. So our friends up north got a version we in the US never did. Again, interesting.
The release is pretty typical. It's fun to find versions I don't have.
The final piece is something I've wanted for a long time. This is an Ertl store display box for the 1/64 diecasts.
Just look at all the Duke goodness. I love the design!
Orange, white and blue all over!
The box has perforations and is meant to be torn and folded as shown in the instructions on the opposite of the colorful panels. I can't bring myself to dissemble or tear the box.
The box was more than just a display, it was also a shipping box. It was once full of 24 1/64s. Can you imagine!
Considering the box is 42 years old, it's not brittle or anything. It was handled with care and is in perfect condition.
This panel is my favorite. Such a great design. I really love this thing.
You know I had to return some 1/64s to the box. Here's every carded release. The two-packs don't fit, this one originally held single cars. Now I have to find 24 carded General Lees and Caddies. I have quite a few, but not many. The search continues!!
Ok one more item. This is an advertising sheet from the late '90s from Ertl showing off the 1/64 three-pack. It feels at home in the Ertl box.
This was designed for advertisers and retailers and includes three different sizes of the same artwork. I said it several times in this blog, but I love this rarer, not for public consumption, stuff. But, I love all Dukes of Hazzard stuff!
