Old Dukes of Hazzard Merchandise

The Dukes of Hazzard was one of my absolute favorite shows growing up and still is today. But back then as a kid, when you had a favorite anything, you tended to want a lot of the tie-in merchandise that went along with it. Such was the case with me and The Dukes of Hazzard. I ended up having quite a bit of merchandise that was tied to the show, but if I tried to highlight them all here you’d never get through the whole thing, so let’s just look at five of them today.

Dukes of Hazzard Power Cycle

My cousin Tim and I lived next to each other, on top of a big hill, and we loved to spend our summer days cruising down that hill on our Big Wheels, and usually wore one out every year, meaning that we each needed a new at Christmas time.
One Christmas, we both received Dukes of Hazzard Power Cycles.  Those things looked so cool, and we both swore that they went faster than any other we’d ever had.  With all the cool decals, the streamers on the handles, and the yellow power hand brake, those things were beautiful.

I’m not sure if they lasted through that first summer season or not (doubt it), but I’m sure when they finally broke down we were sad to see them go.  Our days of him being Bo and me being Luke are great memories though.

Dukes of Hazzard Wrist Racers

Wrist Racers were such cool toys, and they were made for several different properties. But the only ones I ever remember having were these Dukes of Hazzard ones. They featured a small (smaller than Hotwheels) General Lee car or Hazzard County police car that would wind up so you could let it go and it would take off.  You wound up the car and attached it to its “wrist” base, which you wore around like a watch, and left it there until you were ready to set it off on its journey.  On the front of the base, was a pull-out ramp that made it possible to lower your arm to the floor, and have the ramp ON the floor so when you launched the car it didn’t wreck once it left your wrist.  One push of a button released the wound-up car and it would zoom across the floor doing stunts along the way. It was a great tie-in because one of the big appeals to the show were the car chases, and you could kind of duplicate that at home with these wrist racers.

Dukes of Hazzard Mego Figures and General Lee

Being a huge fan of G.I. Joe and having a lot of those figures, coupled with my love of Dukes of Hazzard made owning these things a foregone conclusion.  I had both Bo and Luke, and the General Lee pictured above.  When a job was just a little too tough for the Joes to handle, they called in the special forces….the Duke cousins!

You may think it’s preposterous, but I can distinctly remember a time that G.I. Joe was raiding the Cobra Terrordrome, but the tide of battle was against them.  It was Christmas Day 1986, and Cobra was launching their deadly Firebat from the center of their base to turn the tide of battle against the Joes, but Bo & Luke in the General Lee jumped off a cliff and knocked the Firebat out of the air during its launch to save the day!

Dukes of Hazzard Etch-a-Sketch Action Pack

Etch-a-Sketch was such a brilliant toy and was a huge hit amongst my friends and me.  As much fun as it was trying to create a masterpiece work of art, you could ramp up the fun even more by adding a “fun screen” over the Etch-a-Sketch itself.  There were basic packs of the fun screens that featured sports games and other non-branded fun. And then there were the ones that tied into other properties like The Smurfs, Looney Tunes, and our subject today, The Dukes of Hazzard.

In the Dukes pack were a couple of maze-like games, a connect-the-dots puzzle, and other assorted fun. I never owned this particular action pack, but the set resided at my grandmother’s house and was there for any and all grandkids to use. So on a lot of trips there, I always made sure to take my Etch-a-Sketch along with me to spend a little quality time playing with the Dukes set.

Dukes of Hazzard Cassette Tape

My Dad had originally picked up this cassette and I would listen to it with him when he let me travel with him. When I got my first Walkman knockoff, this bad boy had a new home.  I kept it in that tape player forever and would just listen to this thing on loop.  I wore the cassette out in short order somehow, and my Dad ended up buying me another copy.

It had the iconic theme song on it and a host of other really good songs if you’re into country music. This piece of tie-in merchandise was really spot on since music had a featured role in the show on numerous occasions.

And just so you can check it out, here’s the album on Spotify:

So that’s five old pieces of Dukes of Hazzard merch I enjoyed years ago. But truth be told, I’m still not too old to enjoy them now, and would do so if given the chance.

TV Guide’s Coverage of The Day After From 1983

The Day After was an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during its initial broadcast, it was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show up to that time and set a record as the highest-rated television film in history.

The movie depicted a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and of several family farms near nuclear missile silos.

Below are scans of TV Guide’s coverage of the movie the week it aired on television. Enjoy.

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Disney Channel Guide for December 1984

Back when I was young and being jealous of my friends who had cable television, one of the channels I drooled over the most was The Disney Channel. It seemed so cool that Disney had its own channel! But what I didn’t know at that time was that they released their own Disney Channel magazine too. In it, would be details on everything that was coming to the channel that month so folks could set their watches and not miss any of the great programming that was being offered.

So what we have here is the guide section from The Disney Channel Magazine from December of 1984…the year they were debuting Mickey’s Christmas Carol on the channel. So enjoy this look back at what was coming to the channel that month long ago, and let yourself drift away to the days before streaming and on-demand viewing!

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Christmas Comes to Willow Creek

In today’s Retro Ramblings, I’m supplying you with a full-length Christmas movie to watch. It’s a made-for-TV Christmas movie from 1987. And it stars Bo and Luke Duke (well, the actors anyway) driving a big rig full of presents to Alaska. Can you think of any Christmas movie that sounds cooler than this? Well, with the exception of Rocky IV.

Somehow I went almost all of my life without knowledge of this movie’s existence. Then a couple of years ago I was browsing through a TV Guide from 1987 and saw an ad for it. That ad stopped me in my tracks. I immediately went on a hunt for the movie. IT wasn’t on YouTube or any streaming service, and I couldn’t even rent it from Amazon. So I turned to some pirate services and I found it. They say the best things in life are worth waiting for, and in this case, they may be right. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I finally got to watch it.

Here is the synopsis from Google:

Two feuding brothers and one’s teenage son spend four days in an 18-wheeler taking toys from California all the way to Alaska, facing blizzards and their own complicated history together.

Looking at the time this came out, it seems logical that this was the first project that either John Schneider or Tom Wopat worked on after wrapping up their hit TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. And it caught both of them at a great time. The dynamic of their characters in this is unique. While Tom Wopat’s character seems very much in line with his Luke Duke character, John Schneider’s character is a 180 degree flip from Bo Duke…at least at the beginning of the film. But that just adds to the allure of this movie. It may seem cheesy at times, but at the end of the day, I was certainly glad I discovered it and it has worked its way into my Christmas movie rotation. Not quite on a yearly basis yet, but every other year.

I thought I would share this with you this year in case you’ve never heard of it, or have heard of it but didn’t know how available it was now. So when you have some time on your hands this holiday season, give it a watch.