Raiders of the Lost Indy: The Stan Solo Version

foreign Hasbro's retro collection announcements they're like reaction figures they're kind of hinting at the Kenner Vibe but they're not quite there and their recent announcement of the Retro vintage Kenner Indiana Jones does not look like the Kenner Indiana Jones there's something wrong going on with that head his head looks squished and Tiny and not perfectly replicated where do I begin well let's take the Wayback machine to 2022 when Stan solo released his vintage Kenner Marion Ravenwood action figure at the time he did that he had made overtures implying that he was going to move on and do Indiana Jones as well the original Kenner figure and recreate that one now why those two figures well those two figures are the entire reason that the Kenner Adventures of Indiana Jones figure range small as it is is so highly collectible desired and expensive those two figures were the hard ones to find in the 80s and that caused kids to lose desire to try and collect it Flash Forward now and those two figures are the most expensive in the range loose or carded loose mint condition they go for hundreds of dollars each carted thousands Mary and Ravenwood being no joke intended the Holy Grail of the whole line with Indiana Jones not terribly far behind three thousand bucks those two figures the two main Heroes of Raiders of the Lost Ark are what most people are seeking to complete their collections everything else as far as the figures go can be had relatively quickly with a little patience and a little money I need two thousand dollars however despite what a lot of Stan solo detractors like to say that he's a Repro man and he's trying to undercut Hasbro Stan solo stays well out of the way of Hasbro's Ambitions and this Indiana Jones situation is proof positive of that it depends on how reasonable we're all going to be all I want is the girl when they announced that retro collection unexpectedly I might add because we knew they were going to do six inch because that's what Hasbro does that's part of their playbook but I admit that I thought because they already had the molds from the 2008 Indiana Jones figure collection and they were still doing the Star Wars vintage collection super articulated figures in three and three quarter inch scale that it would make more sense to just relaunch that line and start adding in new characters that hadn't been made before instead Hasbro decided no we don't care about modern style three and three quarter inch for Indiana Jones anymore but we want to recreate the entire vintage Kenner collection from scratch wow talk about having to do more work in an area where you're already proven your talents do not lie so at that point when the Hasbro Indiana Jones retro collection was announced Stan solo knew his Indiana Jones ideas needed to be taken off the table and that's exactly what happened but what we didn't know in the background was that Stan solo was very far along in in the development of the recreation of the Kenner vintage Indiana Jones figure and once again referencing my comments from the video I made about the Stan solo Marion I had no interest in this retro collection line because it looked like crap from the images little did I know that it would be even worse in person but because I owned the entire Kenner run I had no need or desire to go collect these inferior and overpriced figures so there I am at Target making my run looking for some Lego sets looking for some movies and I see these things hanging on pegs I never saw the Indiana Jones in person but I saw some of the others like Marion belock and tote every single Marion I saw every single one it looks like her head is separating away from the Torso until you find out no that's just how the neck joint is molded but again I hadn't planned to buy any of these and then I got home one afternoon and Stan solo had sent me a message saying do you have the Retro collection indie and I said no I have no intention of buying that piece of garbage and Stan solo said you might want to do so and I thought why he said because one of the prototypes one of the later iteration prototypes is on its way to you and I want you to look it over and I said your prototype for the stand solo Indiana Jones and he said yes so I started making some emails and phone calls to friends because there were no retro Indies being sold in my area they had all been picked over and lyo Convoy thankfully was able to track one down he found it and sent it my way so huge thanks to lyoconvoy for being able to send me this before we get into the details on the Stan solo unreleased Indiana Jones we need to talk about this Hasbro retro collection Indiana Jones because it is trash it is a clown show oh let's ride right past the fact that these figures are still on those flimsy warping card backs so even though these are retro vintage style figures to appeal to adults of a certain age to display in their collections Hasbro has cheaped out on the packaging and put them on card backs that couldn't be displayed in a trash can let alone in a nice Studio upon removing the figure from the package I noticed that his face is totally different from the original render from Hasbro his face looks childish it looks absolutely bizarre it looks like a little kid wearing his dad's clothes and when compared to the original vintage figure he has no definition in his profile he has virtually no nose and his eyebrows are painted on backwards as well the quality of the figure is so bad he feels like rubber in your hands he feels like Stretch Armstrong his limbs are made from this very very rubbery plastic similar to The Empire Strikes Back retro collection but here it's even worse I could already tell right out of the bubble that the hips on this Indiana Jones were going to tear off without moving they had gotten jammed up inside the plastic torso I had to subject this figure to almost 30 minutes of boiling water to loosen up those hips without them snapping off Hasbro didn't even try to get the colors right the jacket is way too dark the pants are way too yellow it really feels like Hasbro just comped up something sent it to the Factory The Factory sent back their first attempt and Hasbro rubber stamped it and said good to go they didn't even try to alter the colors they didn't try to alter the face sculpt they didn't try to get more definition in the body or the face they just said yep good enough and ran with it and that's what ended up in this package one of the most notorious failings of the original Indie figure were that his hands were made from plastic that was too brittle and so when you tried to put the Whip or pistol in his hands the thumbs would often snap off so Hasbro decided well we're gonna make his arms out of more rubbery plastic okay makes sense for the arms it was a terrible decision for the legs as I just described but then they did something even more baffling they've now addressed the thumb breaking problem but then they turned around with the accessories and made the handles for them twice as thick the revolver handle is so thick the Hasbro figure can barely hold it with his hand completely splayed and then that gun is sitting there on a wing and a prayer meanwhile I don't know if they were asleep at the wheel or if they were three sheets to the wind it Hasbro but they turned around and gave the whip accessory a traffic cone for a handle and this makes no sense whatsoever and I keep asking myself why did Hasbro change the dimensions of these accessories to the extreme especially when it goes directly against the goal of keeping the thumbs from breaking they've already addressed that issue by making the hands out of a different more pliable plastic and now they're going to double and in the case of the whip triple the sizes of the handles for the accessories why I can only think of two possible reasons one they're trying to assuage the anti-repro part of our community which if you're trying to placate them Hasbro I got some advice for you don't do retro anymore that's the only way you're going to actually please these people just don't do retro collection stuff anymore or there's the second possibility they just suck at doing retro nasty you know it's true they clearly aren't good at this the details are soft the accessories are chunky and can't be held the material is rubbery this whole thing is a mess you might as well just go do what you're good at which is hyper articulated three and three quarter inch and six inch just focus on that because that's where you bat maybe 70 percent or here you're batting 10 maybe 12 percent I mean you've got simple details here that has bro completely whipped on let's take the whip for example it has that traffic cone handle which what were they thinking there that looks completely stupid what generic part is that that they just bought in mass and didn't have to Tool up themselves and then to add insult to injury the whip accessory is barely two-thirds the length of the original so now you have Indie carrying around this chunky handled sex whip if this isn't a slap in the face to collectors I don't know what is while we're at it we might as well also talk about the Hasbro retro Collection Mary and Ravenwood because she is Peg warming right now and Stan solo did make a version of her as well and I figured well we have her in hand she's available why not so I picked her up for this video she is just as disappointing as I thought she would be when I reviewed the Hasbro Indiana Jones pulse stream her dress does not match the Kenner pattern no matter how much the Hasbro team protests and talks about all of their forensic research to recreate it and how proud they are of it they should be embarrassed they didn't even add the flower detail on the back which Stan solo managed to do as well as replicating the exact lace pattern and this retro collection Marion Ravenwood has holes in her feet that are so small even the smallest figure stands are too big for this figure this entire exercise with this retro Indiana Jones collection is a simulation all the way down to the footholds so what did we miss out on here what did we lose when Stan solo had to pull back on his plans for a vintage Indiana Jones because Hasbro launched their retro collection instead well something pretty special and what you're about to see is a late stage prototype but it is not the final there were still tweaks that were going to be made to this because Stan solo is that meticulous he has that much of an eye for vintage Kenner designs and it is a real shame because I know he was working on the skin color he was going to get that closer to the original vintage he had some other tweaks he was going to make but what you're looking at here is the closest thing to final it is not final there were still changes that were going to be made I don't know how many iterations of changes but it was closer to the Finish Line than farther away let me just put it that way first of all we already have excellent color matching here amazing color matching and by Design or by accident the pants are slightly more accurate to Raiders than the original vintage Kenner figure the head and face sculpt are slightly different to the Vintage Kenner but not by much and again more changes were to be made to this figure before it was going to launch but at least this figure looks like an adult male human being Stan solo also made sure to redesign the material of the hands to make sure the thumbs don't break off but at the same time he kept the accessories to their vintage Dimensions that means that unlike the Retro collection Indiana Jones this figure's revolver can actually fit in his holster because it's the proper size and in what would have been an added bonus the Stan Solo figure did not have any annoying copyright writing on the back of his jacket whatsoever the Kenner version has a little bit of copyright stamping but has bro decided to Chisel the entire Dead Sea Scrolls on Indy's back I think the funniest part of all this and by funny I mean laughing trying not to cry is that the biggest criticism levied against Stan solo over the years has been the price per unit of his figures people are like that figure's too expensive I'm not gonna pay forty dollars for a figure the figures these are based on Indy and Marion from the Kenner line they go for hundreds of dollars mint loose thousands of dollars carded the reason people want them so badly including those people that are complaining about Stan Solo's prices is because they are often the last ones people need to complete their Indiana Jones collections so you'd rather pay 14.99 for a piece of trash that doesn't look anything like the Kenner original and can barely function as a toy anyway the rubbery limbs make him impossible to stand up Marion has no figure stand that can fit her so she's barely standing up on the edge of her dress but you've decided no even though these are hundreds and hundreds of dollars I can't afford I won't spend 40 on one either that looks extremely respectable and is of manufactured Kenner quality because it is forty dollars I will go and spend garbage money on a garbage product how hard are you trying Hasbro knows because they pulled everybody's pre-orders they canceled everybody's pre-orders for these on pulse and then immediately re-uploaded them at an 11.99 discounted price and then as soon as they hit retail within a week they were also at 11.99 because Hasbro knows they've made garbage and the funniest part about all this is that a lot of you guys that complained about Stan Solo's figure prices which really are reasonable for the quality he's delivering in the short volumes and the short runs he makes they are not unreasonable prices but keep complaining the funny part is I was told by some of you guys hasbros the apologists for this company for years that things like hazlab are the reason that Hasbro can still provide us with vehicles oh they can't sell vehicles at retail they can't sell larger price point things at retail because ready for it because when they do that all that ends up happening is nobody wants them and they go on clearance and poor Hasbro takes a bath on that so it's okay that we're being gouged with hazlab prices to get these larger items or to get these more expensive exclusive figures because Hasbro has to put things in premium categories and also manufacture in lower volumes to prevent things from going on clearance because poor Hasbro shouldn't have to suffer clearance prices it's our fault for not buying the stuff it's not actually low volumes but then I was also told you ready for this I was told in the case of this line coming out in social media discussions that descended into arguments that when I said 1499 was a ridiculous price to pay for a five POA retro figure that looked like it was going to be low quality anyway this is before they came out I was told by more than a few Geniuses Hasbro apologists no less that oh that's ridiculous because I'm not going to buy them at that price I'm going to wait for them to go on clearance you can't make this up they'll they will sit there and defend they will sit there and defend Hasbro's high price gouging moves over here by saying Hasbro shouldn't have to expect their products to go on clearance and then over here when you point out their high prices they go oh that's ridiculous because um you're not going to end up paying that and I'm not going to pay that either I'm just going to wait for it to go on clearance I thought you just said Hasbro having to put things on clearance was bad and now you're saying that's exactly the way you buy from them make up your mind we are we are dealing with a product line that was knowingly discounted right at launch by Hasbro pre-orders were canceled things got re-upped on onto pulse at 11.99 target has slashed their prices to 11.99 for these instantly virtually instantly and yet that doesn't indicate trash that doesn't indicate garbage that doesn't indicate not worth it because this thing was already over uh 25 uh the price of what a Stan solo one might have been and a Stan solo one is one you can display in your collection with your your Kenner Originals both the Marion and the Indy it amazes me I can't afford a 600 Marion understood I can't afford a two hundred dollar Indy understood I won't pay for a forty dollar window I'll go buy this 14 piece of crap and I don't know if it's because you're obsessed with who's on the the copyright stamp or if you just don't like people who innovate or what but Hasbro does not have the chops to do this kind of work they barely have the chops to do their six-inch stuff and I've seen the six inch Indy and it is terrible I don't know what it's going to take for you guys to start figuring out that sometimes a forty dollar figure is very reasonable and very worth it I mean you're talking about a Stan Solo figure where the spring action in the arm is still present and works in both directions whereas on the Hasbro retro collection figure it only works in One Direction the other direction it gets gummed up and it it barely works overall again a simulation rather than an actual product but hey you don't have to worry because Hasbro won the day on this one they put out their crap products that you get to pick up for a really cheap price and be probably not so proud of on a shelf your appearance is exactly the way I am Dan solo did the smart thing Stan solo always does the smart thing he's not looking to go up against Hasbro's legal department he's not trying to take them on he's just trying to deliver the best vintage style figures to collectors people in our age group and this Indiana Jones would have been incredible and I hope that you've now seen it it will make some of you rethink that whole complaint about pricing because with the Vintage figures being so high in price that it made them so desirable the 14 Hasbro Indian Marion are abject failures they are embarrassing but hey forty dollars was too much right too much thank goodness for the 14.99 immediately discounted to 11.99 pile of garbage final faction figures are objectively better than these toys and these aren't aimed at kids because kids don't know who Indiana Jones is he hasn't had a movie in 15 years and before that he hadn't had a movie in almost 20. these are aimed at adults and the last thing I'll say on this is De Hasbro you guys aren't good at this you need to be focusing your attention on Shoring up your six-inch characters and and products because those are starting to Slack you need to Shore that up again and I would argue that if you're insistent on doing something like a retro collection line for Return of the Jedi or Indiana Jones you might want to start Outsourcing that and know not to super seven you would do well to Outsource it to somebody like Stan solo they get what Kenner was about they get it it would make you guys at that company look a lot better selling those figures at a Hasbro pulse maybe exclusive price you know because they're a little more expensive to Tool up because they're done right but they are things that people would be proud to display they would have the proper card backs they would have the proper engineering the proper Plastics the proper material and they would still be sold at a very reasonable 30 to 40 dollar price with you guys behind Stan solo and and producing at a certain volume I bet you guys could get the price down below 40. but will you have the humility to do that I seriously doubt it so you guys keep pumping out this garbage while your little acolytes keep buying it and the rest of us can dream about what could have been if both The Collector world and the Hasbro Executives would hang up their pride and do what's best for the collector you don't look very happy fools bureaucratics I don't know what they've got there [Music] thank you

Channel: RetroBlasting

Views: 17,334

Keywords: retroblasting, hasbro, stan solo, kenner, vintage, indiana jones, action figure, raiders of the lost ark

Id: sDQtx4eRT3c

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023