I never had the patience to build models when I was younger. Heck, I’ve had a complete set of the Aurora Monster Dragster models sitting on the office shelf for years now that I haven’t even opened. Even so, as a kid there was a an allure to the world on model kits, if only because there were so many sets available for cool vehicles that never had standard toy counterparts. I remember a friend had a super cool model of Airwolf from Ertl that I always wanted to play with, but rightly so he never let me near it. I’m sure he spent hours meticulously cutting out the pieces from the plastic trees and gluing them together. He’d even managed to paint it in show-accurate colors. I was reminded of this as I ran across this crazy MPC Dukes of Hazzard model car ad from a 1981 issue of Boy’s Life magazine…
It’s kind of strange that there was a whole line of models in the series including Cooter’s Tow Truck and Daisy’s Jeep. I’d be willing to bet cash money that there were also models for Boss Hog’s ride as well as Roscoe’s police cruiser. The General Lee I understand, but why would a kid want a 1/25th scale replica of Cooter’s Tow Truck? I mean if it were a toy, like a Hot Wheel or Matchbox car, okay, but as a display model? I guess you’d have to be one heck of a Ben Jones super-fan. Or a nine year-old tow truck enthusiast I guess. Weird.
The ad is pretty neat though, not only because of the fun artwork on the Duke Boys, but because the copy is written in-character with regional speech issues and all. Personally I think this ad could have approached genius levels of awesome if the copy writer had managed to get across that the text was narrated by the one and only Balladeer, Waylon Jennings, but that’s just me…
