coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.