Temple of Doom is my favorite Indiana Jones movie and a big part of that is due to the charm and exuberance of Ke Huy Quan’s performance as Short Round. Needless to say I was looking forward to this figure quite a bit which can sometimes be a double edged sword with this hobby. Let’s take a look at Mr. Round. Short. Round.
I really enjoy the sepia-toned artwork that wraps around the front to the side of the boxes in this line. The portraits of Shorty on there are a great likeness to the actor and capture the character and the sense of adventure and fun from the Indy films well. The only downside is that it does make me wish they had gone for a different expression on the face of the figure.
Shorty comes with his hat, Indy’s hat, a voodoo doll, a knife, a removeable jacket, a torch, and a build-an-artifact piece. The artifact pieces are fairly large chunks of chocolate brown plastic that interlock. This makes part of the skull-themed altar for the Sankara Stones, the macguffin of Temple of Doom. They aren’t terribly exciting without the rest of the wave, but I’m looking forward to building it.
Shorty’s blue soft-goods jacket is fairly successful for this type of thing from a mass market company, I think the main thing it is missing for me in terms of detail is the clasps on the front. I appreciate the different color it adds to the Adventure Series shelf and gets you closer to all of his looks in the movie (he also has some blue-ish pants that he wears earlier in the movie that aren’t represented here).
The hat is also removeable and is cast in a softer plastic. The hat has the blue lines of the ball cap and a hint of the NY Giants logo with a stylized N. I would have preferred the actual logo, but this gets pretty close. I’m thinking about seeing if I can track down a thin blue paint marker to add the Y, but I’m not sure it bugs me enough to do that. The hat is slightly large since it is a removeable piece with a full head of hair under, but I think it’s pretty good and I like the option to move it up and back on his head or backwards for a different look.
The separate Indy hat is a nice touch since the Indy hats in this line aren’t removeable and a lot of the action in these films does relate to him losing and re-acquiring the hat. Shorty can wear it too and it’s super cute.
Shorty also comes with a Voodoo doll of Indy which is appropriate since he stops Indy from being tortured with the doll and there is nice detail on it, but really feels like it would be a better accessory for the Maharajah.
I think this torch is meant to be the one he uses to bring Indy out of the black sleep of Kali, but it could be useful for a lot of things. Lots of torch use in the Indy series. The translucent orange plastic looks nice when lit from behind though the accessory is a little thick for the figure’s grip hands and works best in the open left hand.
Finally he comes with a tiny little knife that I almost lost a couple times to the carpet monster. I remember him having the knife in his escape scene later in the movie, but totally forgot he has it in his hand as they enter the chamber with the spiked ceiling earlier. It’s cast in that slightly metallic gray plastic and has a little bit of paint on the handle.
The sculpting on Shorty is solid. The clothing all has realistic folds and a sense of weight to them. His shirt is an overlay piece and underneath there is an undershirt and suspenders sculpted. The portrait has a decent likeness, but looks slightly generically cute kid. It makes me wish they had given him a smiling portrait too because I think it would be easier to read the likeness. He’s got sort of an awed expression, which reads a little as scared to me, but to be fair, it works for the movie since this poor kid went through the wringer.
Articulation is in line with the Black Series and the rest of the adventure series with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and ankles
- Ball and socket waist, wrists, lower neck, and head
- Swivel thighs
It all moves fairly well, though I wish the elbows bent more than 90 degrees and the hips allowed for slightly higher side-kicks. The paint is decent, but I am missing some details. For example the shoes should be a filthy white, but they just went with the brown of the pant legs. His shirt also has a subtle check pattern in the film that is absent here. The face print is pretty solid, though the eyebrows are really high, lending him more of a frightened look than I think they may have intended.
Overall, I love having Short Round and Indy on my shelf. He looks fantastic paired with the Raiders Indy and is scaled nicely. He comes with a nice variety of accessories, but I do wish he came with their bag or the bundle of their stuff he carries during his escape scene and another expression would have been fantastic. Now I just need some baddies for him to fight.
Source: Fwoosh
