Here is an extremely cool (and rare!) piece of obscure Hanna-Barbera merchandise. It's a chess set themed after The Jetsons and The Flintstones, released by Franklin Mint in 1992! This company releases a bevy of high-end chess sets, in addition to die-cast cars, jewelry, art pieces, and more. As you can see by the photos, this piece lives up to its legacy of providing the best product possible. Out of all the merchandise I've seen for these characters prior to the 21st century, these may very easily have the best depiction of them. The character selection is also very thorough, with this being one of the few pieces of Jetsons merch I've ever seen where Cogswell gets some love!
Now, if one wanted to get ahold of this back in the day, this was no ordinary chess set you walked into a store and bought. No, you had to be part of a subscription service Franklin Mint ran. Each month, you'd get a new chess piece, and as the final part, the board itself, which was limited to only 500. Because of the very unorthodox means of getting this item (how many subscription services have you heard of involving chess?), it's no surprise that a complete version of the game is a hard thing to come by. Listings for the full set on eBay run well into the thousands, and that's when you can even find them!
As a last note, it's interesting that the board is titled "The Flintstones Meet the Jetsons", while the 1987 TV movie was "The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones." You'd think they'd go with the same title the film went with, but I guess since The Flintstones was easily the more popular of the two by this point, they got first billing. I actually have a whole post coming this summer about the other times the two families met beyond that movie, so consider this post a prelude of sorts to that!
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