Custom Indy Figures – Major Arnold Toht

This is my latest custom Indy figure, a truly awesome one:

 

Major Arnold Toht from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”:

 

Toht is a Gestapo agent assigned to retrieve from Marion Ravenwood the headpiece of the Staff of Ra, an artifact which could be used to discover the location of the Ark of the Covenant. Toht was chased off by Indy, but he later follows Indy and Marion to Cairo, aiding in the Nazi effort to recover the Ark.

 

Recipe:

Head – Vax Potorr from the “Star Wars Joker Squad”

Rest of the body – SDCC 2008 exclusive Cobra Commander from G.I. Joe

Hat – Indiana Jones (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”)

Glasses – Dr. Henry Jones (“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”)

Coat – The coat belonged to a Vintage Toht figure released by Kenner back in 1982, it’s 27 years old!

 

Now this Indy custom has an interesting story. Hasbro was supposed to release Toht as part of wave 5 of Indiana Jones figures, but that wave got canceled. Not long thereafter, Hasbro released a Cobra Commander in black suit as a G.I. Joe SDCC exclusive figure. Although there had never been any official word, it was believed that the sculpting mold used for the development of the unreleased Toht figure was instead reutilised for producing this Cobra Commander in black suit. Therefore, for many Indy fans, to make a custom Toht by working on this Cobra Commander figure is the nearest thing to obtaining an official Toht figure from Hasbro, considering that it was supposed to be released as Toht in the first place!

 

Cobra Commander in black suit

 

Since this Cobra Commander figure is an exclusive figure (it was only available at the 2008 San Diego Comic Convention), you can imagine that not too many would have made it here to Singapore, and those that were actually on sale here were being sold at rather high prices. Personally, I wouldn’t spend too much than I absolutely needed to when it comes to collecting figures. So, I managed to acquire the Cobra Commander from someone who was selling it at a slightly lower price than all others. Then it occured to me that I might as well keep the figure as it is since it is an exclusive figure, quite valuable in its own right. But I figured that, to the Indy fan, nothing else mattered except creating that Indy custom and be able to own that figure.

 

    

Yay ! I now got Toht, another one of the five canceled Indy figures. The hot iron poker was fashioned out of the handle which I cut out from the wire-cutter when I was making the wrench for the German Mechanic. This was a case of putting whatever spares that I had to good use.

 

I decided to use the head of Star Wars Vax Potorr (a somewhat obscure figure) for Toht as Vax Potorr is a bald guy, and I can easily paint Toht’s receding hairline onto the head. The glasses come from TLC Henry Jones, with the frames repainted silver. And the coat was something that I simply needed to make Toht complete. A loose Vintage Toht coat (without the figure) went on auction on eBay, and I won the item after some fierce bidding.

 

 Gestapo Agent Toht, with his hat off.