blue hook stars. According to this scenario the stars brighter than the gap at $M_V \approx$ are canonical EHB stars which lost all but $\sim$0.01 of their envelope mass prior to undergoing the helium core flash. As discovered by Castellani & Castellani ([@caca93]), stars which lose more mass than this will leave the red giant branch and evolve to high effective temperatures before undergoing the helium core flash, producing the so-called “hot flashers". Sweigart ([@swei97]) subsequently showed that hot helium flashes can occur either as a star evolves from the tip of the red giant branch to the top of the white dwarf cooling curve (“early" hot flasher), or later as a star descends the white dwarf cooling curve (“late" hot flasher). For even higher mass loss, a star will die as a helium white dwarf without ever igniting helium. These different evolutionary paths are illustrated in Moehler et al. ([@mosw02]) and Sweigart et al. ([@swbr02]).

D’Cruz et al. ([@dcdo96], [@dcoc00]) proposed that the blue hook stars could be the progeny of such hot flashers, but unfortunately the D’Cruz et al. models were, at most, only $\approx$ fainter than the canonical ZAHB, much less than required by the observations. More 