Stuffed Animals--Indian Jones Style

Looking back through our blogs, I realized that we have yet to talk about archeology-related stuffed animals.  A little bit of research quickly revealed a reason for this—while dinosaur dolls are easy to find, plush toys directly related to archaeology are much harder to locate.  However, I found it very interesting that a Indiana Jones toys search yielded much different results…  

  

The collectables are clearly hot commodities:
The Limited Edition Kermit is worth $69.99, and the 
Indiana Jones Mickey Mouse Adventurer sells for $49.99.

Not quite a plush toy...
but still very entertaining:
Indian Jones Mr. Potato Head 
and the
Taters of the Lost Ark!

Although this set of dolls is very diverse, they all share a couple of key features.  The first, and most important item is Indiana Jones’ classic fedora.  No archaeologist is ready for research without this vital piece of headwear.  Most of these toys are also adorned with a gun or whip, handy for hunting down troublesome artifacts. To me, these accessory choices represent the use of marketable gimmicks used to relate these otherwise random dolls to the public’s glamorized depiction of an archaeologist.  

This leads me to the second similarity I noticed.  Almost all of these dolls are characters from other sources.  Mr. Potato Head, Kermit the Frog, and M+M’s alike are symbols of other toys, TV shows, and candies.  These pictures all show these separate characters dressed up to play the part of Indiana Jones.  Although there are many plastic action figures available, I only found one plush version of the actual Indiana Jones that was not a costumed character from another source.  

These examples show how companies use public interest in a particular topic to market their existing toys by reintroducing them in new costumes.  Indiana Jones is much more appealing to general public than a traditional archaeologist.  These commercialized toys reflect marketing tricks that control which plush toys are available to the public.