Short Round

In another life, I would have really liked just raiding tombs and finding artifacts with you. When orphan Short Round is caught picking pockets, Indiana Jones takes him under his wing as his loyal sidekick! I'll be the first to admit, Temple of Doom gets a bad rap. Yes, I'd rather re-watch Crystal Skull than sit through ToD, but it's not entirely terrible. It has some of the best action set pieces (the opening, the mine carts, etc.), it's just that the story they're hung on is weak. The two most divorced guys in Hollywood teamed up to write a movie where the sole woman character is constantly shrieking at the hero and being a burden to everyone - nope, no hidden messages there, no siree bob! Giving Indy a kid sidekick had been an idea in an early draft of Raiders, but it took until the sequel-prequel for it to actually happen. Ke Huy Quan didn't actually intend to audition for the role of Short Round - he just went to be supportive of his brother, but he managed to impress everyone with his coaching. He then basically got screwed over by Hollywood until 2022, when he became everybody's favorite again. The toy's likeness is fairly good, but does one 12-year-old really look that different from any other? He's got a vaguely worried look and a New York Giants (okay, technically just a hat promoting the letter N) baseball cap, so yeah, that's him all right! Actually, the hat is a removable piece, but his head is small so don't expect it to be suitable for very many custom figures. You'll have to continue to rely upon The Brat for that one. That does mean the figure can include an accessory that shows just how much Short Round (as a character) meant to Indiana Jones: a loose copy of Indy's hat. Indiana Jones doesn't even let his own son wear his hat, but he's perfectly fine with Shorty putting it on. The interior is sized to fit on this toy's head, so don't necessarily plan on giving that to any of the hatless Indys, either. The point is, Short Round is someone Indiana Jones genuinely likes, and that's not a common thing. Short Round did have a few different outfits through the course of the movie, and Hasbro was smart enough to know that there was never going to be a second series, so they needed to do everything they could right now. The ballcap can be worn forwards or backwards. His blue jacket is softgoods, and can be removed. (Softgoods? On a smaller figure? What a novel idea.) Underneath that he's got his tan shirt, and that's a separate (but not meant to be removed) PVC piece over the dirty tank top beneath. His pantlegs are short enough that you can see his ankles above his simple shoes - scandalous! Articulation is normal for a figure of this size and vintage: barbell head, balljoined neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, balljointed waist, balljoint hips, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge knees, and swivel/​hinge ankles. That's enough to do pretty much whatever you want him to: drive a car, fall asleep on Indy, beat up a fellow child, anything! He's less than 4½" tall, which is an accurate size, as well. Hasbro may have crapped the bed with this line's distribution, but the actual production was decent. In addition to the two hats, his accessories include a burning torch, a knife, and a voodoo doll of Indiana. The same early script that would have made the movie less racist, Indiana smarter, and Willie braver and more useful, would also have given Short Round more to do than being "the sidekick." To begin with, he and the young Maharajah would have begun a rivalry as soon as they met, explaining why they were so at odds at the end of the movie, when they were fighting over control of the voodoo doll. In another scene, Shorty sees some lava spurt on one of the guards, waking him from his trance, which is how he knew to use the flaming torch to jab Indy and get him back to his senses. The knife is just a knife he carried around. Because he's so tiny, Short Round includes a very big piece of the Series 2 Build-An-Artifact, the big skull-shaped altar Mola Ram kept the Sankara stones in. He gets the entire back of the skull, which is a vague enough piece that it doesn't look like anything on its own. Maybe it could be a big rock stuck in the ground in a display? Like Indiana Jones himself, Short Round was named after a dog - the screenwriters', who had itself been named after the orphan character in 1951's The Steel Helmet, a movie that is otherwise utterly forgotten today, a second-tier footnote in a trivia item. (It's an existing military term for a round of ammunition with less propellant than usual, making for a weaker bullet that falls short of the target, so no, 1935 Indiana Jones was not making a reference to a 1951 movie.) The second series of Adventure Series figures was definitely better than the first, but, of course, no stores carried them, so it doesn't matter. Short Round is a really great little figure, it's just a shame almost no one will ever own one. -- 08/24/24