Hasbro The Adventures of Indiana Jones Short Round Hasbro, 2023
Day #2,586: June 22, 2023
Indiana Jones Target Exclusive
The Adventures of Indiana Jones Retro Action Figure
Item No.: No. F6081 Manufacturer:Hasbro Includes:Torch Action Feature:n/a Retail:$11.99 Availability: May 2023 Other: An Original
I didn't like retro Indiana Jones [FOTD #2,566] very much, mostly because it feels like the generation loss between the original and the reissue was pretty severe. With Short Round there's no precedent - Shorty didn't have a figure when LJN did toys nearly 40 years ago, but there was a prototype.
When making retro figures - and trust me, I've had these conversations - you have to ask what the original toys were like, and what was the intent (and vocabulary) of the original toy sculpt. I lost a lot of those arguments - I look at old Kenner figures and rarely do figures have two hands that can grip an accessory unless the figure includes two accessories. Usually one hand is something like a claw, usually there are some interesting bends in the arms, and there are never separately molded vests or jackets. Heads aren't molded in two colors of plastic, either. When left carded, Mr. Round looks like a convincing retro-style figure - but the closer you get, the more obvious it is that this is a modern figure.
Hasbro made some curious design choices here. For example, the arm articulation is good, but they gave him v-crotch hips so his legs splay out. This would prevent him from driving a hypothetical car vehicle or fitting on a non-existent minecart. I'm not sure why they would pick this particular jointing other than to match Indy, but there you go. I'd assume they'd see Temple of Doom as a fresh start, and maybe try to match the bulk of Kenner's other offerings... but no. The head swivels nicely and is even a little loose, giving a sense of verisimilitude that someone with old figures may appreciate.
I really don't like what they did with the head (but I get it) or the jacket. If memory serves, Kenner never did a "vest" with a separately molded rubbery part as the jacket or a vest until the late 1990s, with the likes of Endor Trenchcoat Han Solo (1997) and CommTech Han Solo (1998) getting the extra piece of plastic. Kenner would have - and certainly did - sculpt the coat as part of the torso to keep costs and part count down. It's another mold and another color of plastic, raising costs back when keeping these things as cheap as possible was of paramount importance. Similarly, it appears his head is multiple molds - the hat is molded in gray, while the face is molded in flesh colors. I admit it looks better and may have even been a cheaper way to make the figure in 2023, but it's not the kind of thing Kenner was doing back then. (Playmobil was on top of it, with brown molded eyes inset in the figure heads.)
I haven't even commented on the sculpting yet, just on the execution. I think your average fan won't even notice these kinds of details since the detailing is simplified and the jointing more or less matches classic Kenner toys, complete with the simple eyes and a lack of painted detail on his cap. The painted flesh on his neck looking a tiny bit off, on the other hand, is extremely right-on-the-money. So is a tiny bit of paint from his hands spilling over on his coat sleeves.
His head sculpt looks pretty good, and seems to look pretty convincingly like something Kenner might have sold back then. I don't know if we would have had the sculpted buttons, but they look good on his jacket. The wrinkles and folds on his jacket, shirt, and pants also look good, as do the fairly simple shoes. Hasbro even put the copyright stuff on the back of the leg, as was common at the time, and didn't print a novel on the back of his jacket. I'd say the design is inarguably superior to how Indiana Jones was done in any of Hasbro's other releases - they all just looked weird in various unpleasant ways.
With a painted two-color torch accessory, Short Round comes up... short. Marion had a cloth dress and a monkey, Indy had a whip and a pistol, Toht has a big cape, and Shorty lacks knee joints. He's on part with (and maybe a bit better than) Hasbro's retro Kenner Star Wars offerings, offering something more "old" looking than the Kenner Marvel line while modernizing the character slightly. It isn't a convincing "this is what Kenner would have done in 1984" figure by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a $12 Oscar winner that is the best Short Round figure money can presently buy. His pose and general look and feel are better than the bulk of what we've been seeing as "new" old figures, but you can't look at a toy like this and not compare it to the previous figures in the line from 41 years ago. Considering that this is probably the last year we're going to see Hasbro make Kenner-style Indiana Jones figures, and I assume nobody else is going to want to pick up the license unless Disney is hard-up for money down the road, it's time to board the "good enough" train if you want this one. Had Hasbro molded the jacket "vest" to the body, I'd be praising it a lot more. As it is, it's just too modernized for me to look at it and say "wow, they captured the old magic."
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