Although Raiders of the Lost Arkwas the biggest movie of 1981, its success did not translate to toy sales for Kenner. Kenner had hoped their Adventures of Indiana Jonesline would be a successor to their still-massive Star Warsline, and produced a highly-detailed line of figures, playsets, and vehicles modeled after Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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Despite – or because of – their initial retail failure, the Kenner Adventures of Indiana Jones figures are today highly collectible to fans of vintage action figures and the Indiana Jones franchise. This included Jeff Jacob, former owner of the world’s largest Kenner Star Warscollection. As part of their years-spanning auction of the Jeff Jacob collection, Hakes sold off Jacob’s near-mint condition complete set of Adventures of Indiana Jones figures last Thursday – and for five times the price they expected, coming just shy of $20k against an estimate of a $2-4k price.
Kenner’s first wave of four Adventures of Indiana Jones figures hit shelves in 1982 – the year after Raiders of the Lost Ark’s release, and likely a factor in the line’s poor sales. This first wave consisted of Indiana Jones, Marion Ravenwood, the Cairo Swordsman, and Toht. Marion and the Cairo Swordsman were the first of several Kenner Indiana Jones figures to include “soft-goods” clothing made with real cloth. These soft-goods make loose figures notoriously difficult to find in good condition, as the clothing was often lost or soiled by children at play.
Indiana Jones also suffers from a common condition issue: a broken thumb. Indy’s hand was sculpted with “quick-draw action” for his included pistol, and was made with brittle plastic. The feature is a hold-over from Kenner’s 1979 Butch and Sundance: The Early Years figures, from which the tooling for Indiana Jones was borrowed. Toht is the easiest of the figures to locate loose, though usually without his plastic cloak.
Accompanying the figures were three ornate playsets: the Map Room, Streets of Cairo, and Well of the Souls. The Map Room set included an exclusive figure of a disguised Indiana Jones; while the Streets of Cairo included a “Monkey Man” figure and an unarticulated “slug figure” of Marion that could be hidden in the included baskets. Like Marion and the Cairo Swordsman, these figures came with cloth robes, and because they were only packaged with the poorly-selling playsets, are even more difficult to locate in good condition.
The Well of the Souls is the largest and most elaborate of the playsets, consisting of a baseplate with a break-away wall, two golden arches, and numerous accessories. This was the only release in the line that included the Lost Ark itself, along with fourteen snakes and a pair of mummies to recreate other key set pieces from the Well of the Souls sequence – though R2-D2 and C-3PO are nowhere to be found.
Saving the Best Characters for Last with the Second Wave
Although a slow seller, the 1982 wave still did well enough to warrant a second series the following year, which finally included key characters Belloq and Sallah. Belloq was released in two versions: a representation of his look from the Tanis dig site, and a mail-away figure of his ceremonial robes from the film’s climax. The Tanis dig Belloq included a papermap accessory, which is unsurprisingly nearly impossible to locate with loose samples of the figure. Despite never appearing at retail, Ceremonial Belloq is one of the easiest figures in the line to locate – though often without his ram-headed staff accessory.
Sallah was the only figure in this wave to include soft-goods clothing, and is among the more difficult figures in the line to acquire because of it – especially when coupled with his status as a fan-favorite character.
The wave (and line) are rounded off by another Indiana Jones variant and a third villain. Indy is this time in his “German Soldier Disguise” from the film’s third act, and is paired with a bazooka with which he can threaten to blow up the titular ark. The final figure is Pat Roach’s German Mechanic, a notoriously poor seller who lingered on store shelves well into the decade. The German Mechanic is a perennial feature on lists of the worst “peg-warmers” of the eighties.
A desert convoy truck and horse were produced with the second wave, but saw limited production, making them some of the least common releases in an already rare toyline. Like the standard Indiana Jones figure, the horse was reused from the Butch and Sundance line
Why This Lot Sold for a Record Price
The lot sold through Heritage last week included all eight standard release figures, the mail-away Belloq, the two playset exclusives, the Marion “slug figure,” and the horse. Given their rarity and past sales, Hakes’ estimate of a $2-4k final price seems reasonable. The $16k difference was condition: all of the included figures are in AFA (Action Figure Authority) graded 90 near-mint condition. The exception is the standard release Belloq, who is only graded at an 85. But for the other eleven figures, no others are on record in this condition or better, making them the literal best loose samples of these figures in existence.
With this taken into account, the high price is no longer shocking. The sale marks the first time this near-mint set has been sold at auction, and it could be decades – if ever – before they’re up for sale again. For the time being, one lucky collector can say with objectivity that they have the world’s greatest collection of Kenner Indiana Jones figures
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