The General Lee; Was it inevitable?

[hemi68charger]

Friend of mine just texted me a picture of a General Lee toy, notice something? Guess it was inevitable?

[myk]

The death of America, symbolized and brought to you by the box of a plastic toy car...

[Bandit72]

i believe that particular model of car has been edited for quite some time

[hemi68charger]

i believe that particular model of car has been edited for quite some time

ahhhhh, I never knew that..... Haven't been down the toy isle in a while... 

[Mike DC]

 
Yeah, they edited the flag off the box art most of a decade ago.  I think Walmart demanded it when the GL kit first re-entered mainstream stores during the Jessica Simson movie era. 

The decal sheet inside the box still contained the rebel flag up to now.  No telling whether that will continue or not. 

[tcs69rt]

In 1980 I was just 13 and Mom gave me that same model kit for Christmas. She has a pic of me holding that same model kit box and smiling. I should ask her to send that pic to me. I painted it all black and added different wheels and wide slicks from a dragster model and added flames on the hood! No 01 or flag put on it, I was building my dream car back then!  I still have that model in a box at home, all these years later and a black 69 RT is in my garage now. So, if I'm white and painted my General Lee model Charger black...am I racist?   

[Kern Dog]

Funny. 

[69wannabe]

They took the flag off that model kit in the late 90's/early 2000's when it was an AMT ertl kit but a few kit's slid by with the flag actually on the car and I am not sure but I think the 05 movie release of the model kit had the flag on the car also visible. I got to dig a few of these out and make sure I am telling the truth tho...

[Brock Lee]

The reissues started off with the original artwork and lasted about a year (they broke records in sales as used GL kits were "booking" for about $175 at this point NOS). Then they removed the flag, but it came back, maybe around the time they reissued the MPC brand name in the mid 2000's?

[MaximRecoil]

They took the flag off that model kit in the late 90's/early 2000's when it was an AMT ertl kit but a few kit's slid by with the flag actually on the car and I am not sure but I think the 05 movie release of the model kit had the flag on the car also visible. I got to dig a few of these out and make sure I am telling the truth tho...

It was the late 1990s for sure, because that's when I bought this:



The flag decal was included in the box however.

Note that it is the same horribly painted picture that's on the box in the OP's picture, with the exception of the rear window. In the late 1990s when these were first reintroduced, they were using a model of a '69 Charger 500 with a 426 Hemi, i.e., it had the flush rear window (though they had a standard '69 Charger grille in the kit), so that's how the bad artist drew it on the box. It looks like when they finally started using a model of a standard '69 Charger in the kit, they had that same perception-impaired artist modify his painting in the rear window area, though he made a mess of that too. It looks like a Charger as viewed in a funhouse mirror. He was way off with the door numbers too. I don't know what the discount bargain basement "artist" was going by, because the "01" decals in the kit are actually the correct style of numbers, as used on the TV show.

[Brock Lee]

The box art and the model were reissued from the original MPC kits sold when the show was new. The only revisions were the MPC logo was changed to AMT and the 80's models were not only 500's, but had hood and trunk pins molded in. The reissues deleted the pin details and added wiper details. But, the original GL kits were also 500's with standard Charger grilles. It is sad too as MPC made the original 1969 Charger promo models and those same molds were used for the Dick Landy Charger kits. They were beautiful. Somewhere between 1969-1979 the molds went through so many retooling and revisions that detail was lost by the time the GL kits came out.

[Sabre]

So what can be done about this?  WB holds the license to Dukes of Hazzard.  If they won't allow/produce anymore Dukes merchandise will another company buy it from them?  Dukes of Hazzard merchandise is pretty popular.

[Mike DC]

  
It's up to WB.  If they don't want any DOH merchandise to be sold ever again, it's their decision.    

Disney has taken a few of their 1940's cartoons out of circulation because of racial stereotypes.  Times change.  



I doubt Warner Bros will cut ties with DOH over this.  They don't have to.  They won't see the flag removal as the death of the show like some fans would.  They won't think half as hard about any of this as we would.  It's a low-budget low-effort show that reliably makes money.

The studio/Hollywood crowd never "got" the show in the first place.  They could never have done it right if they tried.  It was created by a southerner in the 1970s, with their money, and they quickly took over control of it again.  They didn't know why the hell it was working so well but they knew enough not to mess with it.  So the producers basically froze everything about it (same yellow & blue plaid shirts for 7 years) and kept the show going unchanged for the rest of the show's run.  

[Sabre]

I'm bummed, the latest General Lee diecasts were some of the most accurate yet.  I can remember in the 1990's having not seen the show since it went off the air in 85.  Finally I got to see it run in syndication on TNN.  Then I started seeing model kits and ERTL re-releasing cars.  So I started buying them.  It snowballed from there with new more accurate replicas.  Heck there are now dolls of the Dukes characters that are new.  Basically we finally get some good decent new merchandise only to have it stopped cold.  I hope it won't last but it probably will.

[sdweatherman]

There is a business opportunity here. Someone should start up a business that sells vinyl confederate flags for GL models or what ever else you want to put them on. You give us the size - we print it out and mail it to you. $$$$$.

[MaximRecoil]

It's a low-budget low-effort show that reliably makes money.

The Dukes of Hazzard was neither low-budget nor low-effort. Sitcoms and soap operas are "low-budget, low-effort", i.e., shot on video entirely in an indoor set; generally a "3 camera" setup. DoH was a one-hour prime time show shot on 35mm film (very expensive to buy and develop; it is the same stuff big-budget Hollywood movies typically use/used), and had tons of very real, very dangerous car stunts. On top of that, the show soon rose toward the top of the ratings, and the actors weren't cheap at that point. Waylon Jennings, James Best, Denver Pyle, and Sorrell Booke were all well-established before the show started, and they probably weren't particularly cheap to begin with.

Season 7 was cheap, but still likely more expensive than any sitcom or soap opera of the time.

[Mike DC]

 
Compared to an old sitcom?  Yes, very expensive.

A new DOH production of some kind today, compared to WB's next $200 million dollar superhero movie?  No. 


No 35mm 1-hour long action show is "cheap" in the broad sense.  But 30 years ago the stunts & car footage was an order of magnitude cheaper than it would be now.  Not just the price of the cars but the price of staging the entire thing.  Good location property near Burbank, skilled labor prices, insurance, etc.   

[MAC]

There is a business opportunity here. Someone should start up a business that sells vinyl confederate flags for GL models or what ever else you want to put them on. You give us the size - we print it out and mail it to you. $$$$$.


Lets just wait a few years when all this blows over, the Chinese will sell us all DOH merchandise we could ever want.
After all they have a better handle on this free market system then we do these days. 
 

[Brock Lee]

That has already been done. 15 years ago, there was this period of time where one of the popular things in the Dukes hobby was guys making better GL model kits. We would steal rims from Eckler Vettes, modify Monogram kits, etc. That led to a period of time where people were making and selling better decals than what came with the models, aftermarket rims, photo etched metal parts, etc. It was kind of a cool period of time. But the demand tapered off and most of those guys didn't keep it going.

I highly doubt there will be any issues with people buying the old factory stock. There will be a little bubble to start, but eventually things will calm down. There is a ton of this stuff out there. I don't even care about it and I have at least a half dozen given to me by RC2 for my involvement. I know many Dukes guys with dozens. I watched John Schneider sell over 200 in a night on two different occasions. This stuff isn't rare by any stretch of the imagination and eventually so much will hit the market, it will flood and the values will tumble.

[Ghoste]

I agree, there's so much of it in fact that Im surprised people are even falling for the suddenly inflated price gouging.

[Todd Wilson]

There is a business opportunity here. Someone should start up a business that sells vinyl confederate flags for GL models or what ever else you want to put them on. You give us the size - we print it out and mail it to you. $$$$$.

Yeah and sell em on ebay!


Todd