New Dukes Stuff! I've been slacking on my reporting of new additions to the collection, but definitely not falling behind in my buying of new additions to the collection. In this new entry, we got some unique things that I've never seen before. Let's take a look.
First up is a pair of MMA/Boxing shorts dedicated to our favorite show from a company called All Valley Fightwear. There's a good bit to unpack here. First, we see the 01 and rebel flag. All Dukes. The name of the company, All Valley, is obviously taken from Karate Kid, where Daniel San fought Johnny Lawrence at the All Valley Karate Tournament at the end of the movie. And the blue stripe with white stars on the side is reminiscent of the iconic red, white, and blue shorts worn by Apollo Creed and later Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movie series. That's three franchises in one!
We all know about my love for the Dukes, and you are probably familiar with the fact that I love Cobra Kai and Karate Kid, given some of my Halloween costumes and stories I've shared on here. You might even have seen some pictures of me in my Rocky shorts swimming trunks on the old blog. When I saw these pop up on ebay, there was no way I wasn't buying them.
Plus they are about my size, just a little big. They aren't your average shorts, and have a bulky front which I'm guessing is for protection during a match. Doing a little research, All Valley Fightwear was a short lived brand of fighting clothes that closed up shop about a decade ago. I wasn't aware these existed, but I can tell whoever made them loved all the great TV and movies. Speaking of Cobra Kai, I just finished the second part of the last season last night, and I loved it so much. In this era of legacy sequels, where old franchises are brought back with the original cast and also introduce a new cast, Cobra Kai does it so perfectly. Ghostbusters also gets it right. I am going to miss Cobra Kai after the last part of this final season is released. The show is so fun and the action is great. The fight scene in this latest episode was epic. In a world of great legacy sequels, I sure thinks Dukes of Hazzard deserves a new moment to shine.
Back to the Dukes stuff. This is a Dukes poster from Greece that I've never seen before. When it popped up on ebay, I tried to figure out exactly what it was, but it had a decent price and I didn't want to miss out on it, so I bought it and waited until it got to my hemisphere to really examine it. I took a chance and it paid off. This thing is incredible!
My first thoughts were it was a magazine pull-out poster. The fold in the middle gave me that impression. I was wrong, and I'm happy about that. It is a thicker, almost cardboard material. It isn't in perfect condition, but I'm not going to complain about it. It's a little bigger than what a fold out poster would be. The image is interesting. It has NTIOYKE on top. This translates to just Dukes. We've seen that on different DVD releases of the show and movie from Greece. The bottom has writing that translates to Carousel Offer. Maybe this is from a Greek magazine or research says it could be a trading card company. I'm not really sure. But the real jewel is the artwork. This artwork should be familiar to Dukes fans, but were rarely, if ever, seen it complete like this. The right portion with the flying General Lee and Boss and the Duke cousins is shown on many items, most prominently the album cover. But the album cover includes Rosco with Boss, Daisy, Bo and Luke. The character-less image of the General Lee is seen on the shoebox for the super rare Dukes tennis shoes. The left side of this poster is also partly seen on the shoebox, but edited all up. The image is also seen on the the cover of the Dukes novel, Gone Racin', but the Gen'ral is partly invisible on the American version and the flag is only half shown on the British version. The back of the American version of the book includes the left half of the artwork, but doesn't show it all and adds Coy and Vance to the mix. I can't think of a single instance where this entire image is used of a Dukes product. And the omission of Rosco from the artwork is really confusing. Because the album uses a little different version of this artwork, I'm guessing this poster does not coincide with the release of the album. And it's not a part of the shoes release, like the big General Lee display I have. My guess, given the word "offer" on the bottom, is that this poster was used to advertise the release of the novel, Gone Racin', and perhaps was displayed at book fairs in schools in Greece to persuade kids to buy the book. Maybe that's why we've never come across another one. Maybe it is a rare foreign advertising piece for another rare collectible, the novel. Now I gotta find a Greek copy of the book. I like this little adventure this poster took us on, and I think I'll stick with my assumption. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an advertising poster for the Dukes novel from Greece. Prove me wrong.
Moving on. In my discussion of the above poster, I mentioned that I thought it might be a magazine pull-out and was happy I discovered it wasn't. And proved what it was. Magazine pull-outs are fun, but I haven't really gone down that rabbit hole, because there has to be quite a few out there and finding them all might be a little difficult. I do like a challenge. But I did recently buy this one. Mainly because it's a great image of Bo in his Cast and Crew jacket. I have an affinity for the C&C Jackets (first time I've called them that) because I happen to own three different ones. This is a fun candid, behind the scenes photo that I haven't seen before. Tom isn't wearing his jacket. John's has a rebel flag where all three of mine have an American flag. I know of one jacket a fellow collector owns that has the rebel flag. I would love to add one of those versions to my collection. This pull-out poster is a fun addition to the collection. Let's see if I start buying more pull-outs.
I love advertising pieces. I especially love advertising pieces that advertise niche areas of the hobby. This is a pin back button advertising the first video game of the silver era of Dukes of Hazzard collecting. The PlayStation game The Dukes of Hazzard Racing For Home came out in 1999 and was a huge success that spawned a sequel and a PlayStation 2/X-Box reimaging. I'm sure the popularity of the game was further achieved by video game store employees wearing this button. Maybe not.
The front of the pin is nearly perfect and the back has a little scuffing to it. I've seen one or two of these advertising pins before, but never had a chance to buy one. It's taken me a quarter century since it was made, but I finally have one in my collection!
Next up is another piece that wasn't generally meant for mainstream audiences. Do you know how hard it was for me to type "generally" and not General Lee? This is a magnet meant to advertise the Dukes within the cable syndication industry. It has a date of 2001 on it and is labeled Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution An AOL Time Warner Company. American Online was THE name in the early internet days. I have fond memories of a 14.4 kbps modem, at this very office where I'm writing this blog (same room), logging on to AOL with by buddy Brett and discovering chat rooms and message boards. The second thing I ever searched online was the Dukes of Hazzard. AOL was huge in the mid-to-late '90s. But every wrestling fan knows that AOL got too big. They merged with Ted Turner's Time Warner right before the dot-com bubble burst and tech titans caused the market to crash. It was a crazy time. But before it all went south, The Dukes was briefly owned my AOL, just like Bugs Bunny, Superman, and Hulk Hogan's wrestling contract. This magnet is one of the only Dukes items I can think of that mentions that time in the Dukes lifespan.
It was meant to be sent out to individual cable network licensees to persuade them to carry the Original "Original" Dukes. Weird, because were we four years before the movie at this time, and the original Dukes was the only Dukes. Maybe it meant that the Dukes is the original down home family TV show. Whatever the "Original" line is referring to, it's a cool piece and I'm glad I own it. I love these weird little insider pieces. But I love all things Dukes, you know this.
This is a piece I'm so happy to own. I've posted many blog posts about the Dukes school supplies. There are notebooks, folders, drawing pad and pencil pads all made by WriteRight. There are at least thirteen different images used on the covers and several of the images are used on different notebooks and folders. Some are super rare, like the pencil pads and drawing pads, and some can be purchased very reasonable like the more common folders. I've heard legends of a notebook with multiple covers from fellow collectors. Some say it was just hearsay or a phantom and others say it was a homemade craft project. Actually that's not true at all. A fellow collector has one and I've always been jealous. Well I got one now!
I really don't know why WriteRight released a 10.5 inch by 8 inch notebook with seven different covers bundled in one. All of these covers were released individually on their own notebook. The front cover features the Dukes family, including Cooter, in front of the Hazzard County Courthouse. The next one is sweet Daisy hanging out of the driver side of the General Lee
The third image features the General Lee jumping and three images from the show.
The fourth is an image of the General jumping the other way with Boss's billboard and Bo and Luke beneath.
The fifth is Bo and Luke talking through Hazzard Square.
The sixth is Bo and Luke posing with a brown background.
The seventh and final cover features Boss Hogg in the gazebo at the center of Hazzard Square. With all Boss's faults, he sure made a great politician and managed to keep himself in office for a long time.
The notebook is unused and has all the paper intact.
The back cover is identical to the standard, one-cover, notebooks.
The reason for the existence of this notebook is a mystery. Now that mine was unearthed, it proves that my fellow collector's version isn't homemade or a factory mistake. The other one has different covers and in different order. Maybe it was sent to retail buyers to display the different offerings WriteRight wanted them to sell in their stores. It seems like a cheaper option then to send seven different notebooks. I like that reasoning. I'm all about solving mysteries today.
Wizard Magazine. Throughout my younger years in elementary and middle school, I bought Wizard Magazine at my local Foodland nearly every month. I was a comic book fan but rarely bought monthly issues of comics. I bought the occasional trade or special edition, but I kept up with everything in the comics world thanks to my love of Wizard Magazine. All my old copies of Wizard are still around here somewhere too. The internet brought on the end of most niche magazines, but Wizard was still going strong in 2005 when the movie was coming out and they featured Jessica on the cover. The concept of Dukes on the cover of Wizard would have been too much for me to handle in the early '90s.
This issue of Wizard is dedicated to Batman Begins but also covers other movies released in the summer of 2005.
But does not cover them well. There is exactly one page that mentions the Dukes, and it barely gets a paragraph. The inclusion of the Dukes was just a means to get "it-girl" Jessica Simpson on the cover. The description of the Dukes includes comparing the General Lee to the Batmobile and calling Batman Boss Hog, so it isn't all that bad. I would have liked a little more General Lee inclusion, though. Maybe a cartoon of the Batmobile and Gen'ral racing or something. But it is the Batman issue. Cool to reminisce about Wizard Magazine and cool to have one as a part of the Dukes Collection.
Here's another video game addition. This is the 8-bit Atari 800 game Hazard Run by Artworx. I really don't know how this game was released and the creators weren't sued into oblivion by Warner Bros. It is a rarer piece and I'm very glad to add it to the collection. The box art features an orange Charger jumping the creek.
The back describes the antics employed in the game mentioning the sheriff and jumping the Hazard Creek. The internet tells me the name of the car is the Gee Lee. I guess the industry wide video game crash of 1983 kept this game off WB's radar because it was released just prior in 1982.
I actually bought this game is two parts. I found the box and instructions at one time and the found the game cassette later. I'm glad I could finally complete this package.
The instructions are so basic. I mean baby steps basic. But it's really cool to have the original instructions.
Ok, I was born in 1981, video games from when I was one or two are a little before my time, but I am obsessed with a show that premiere two years before I was born, so I know a little more than the average joe about pop culture in the early '80s. But I really don't know much about any Atari game consoles before the Atari 2600. This is all new information to me. The Atari 800 Computer had an accessory cassette drive that looked very similar to the standard cassette recorder you picture when an crime drama flashes back to an interrogation in the '80s that's being audio recorded. I guess it plugged into the computer and let you play the game. It seems there is also a disk version of this game out there. Gotta find that now.
The package warns you that the game is protected by US Copyright law. I bet Warner Bros would have something to say about that.
The internet always comes through and I managed to find some videos of the game in action. There is no defense as to what this game is trying to be. There's the dixie horn and the Gee Lee has a flag on the roof and the number 10 on the door. Maybe they tried to get the Dukes licensing but it didn't work out and they released the game anyway. Wikipedia says they tried to rerelease the game with the licensing as if it wasn't created as a Dukes ripoff game in the first place. You can't always trust Wiki folks. I've embedded different early Dukes video games before on different blog posts, but I'll end this post with the Spectrum game, the Australian Hazzard game and the video me and Jeff put together of the ColecoVision Dukes of Hazzard game so you can compare and see how far the video game industry has come since it's primitive beginnings. Stay turned, more New Dukes Stuff blog posts are right around the corner!
