With retailers like Walmart and Amazon pulling products that feature the Confederate battle flag in the wake of the Charleston church shooting last week, Warner Bros. Consumer Producers announced that it will no longer license The Dukes of Hazzard General Lee cars with the flag on the top.
The Confederate battle flag has been a familiar part of one of TV’s most famous cars since Hazzard debuted on CBS in 1979. It remained on the top of Bo and Luke Duke’s 1969 Dodge Charger for the show’s entire run, which ended in 1985. It was also part of the car seen in the 2005 movie and the 2007 direct-to-video sequel.
Although the car hasn’t been used on the screen since 2007, Warner Bros. has continued to license the car’s image to toy makers, who still make die-cast miniature replicas of it. While these replicas have included the Confederate flag, that will no longer be the case.
“Warner Bros. Consumer Products has one licensee producing die-cast replicas and vehicle model kits featuring the General Lee with the confederate flag on its roof–as it was seen in the TV series,” the company told Yahoo Autos. “We have elected to cease the licensing of these product categories.”
The move came just hours after news broke that Walmart, Amazon, Sears, eBay and others would no longer sell products featuring the flag. The flag has once again become controversial after photos of Dylann Roof, who allegedly shot and killed nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, surfaced with him carrying it.
While there were hardly any protests to the use of the Confederate flag when Dukes first premiered, the issue was brought up in 2012. As The New York Times reported then, Warner Bros. had decided not to change the General Lee design.