Worst Restoration Mistake?

[PrincessMegzie]

WELP. I'm new to cleaning/restoring G1s and I made my first big mistake tonight. I left a Magic Message pony (Magic Mirror) in an OxyClean bath for three hours because I fell asleep. When I finally took her out after waking up, her cutie mark was completely soaked off!! Poor girl is naked now. I cried a little about it because I felt so dumb! She wasn't in fantastic shape to begin with but now she's definitely bait!

So it got me thinking, what are some of your worst restoring mistakes that went completely wrong and ruined the pony you were working on? I'm curious! I can't be the only one to have turned a pony into bait because of a silly mistake, right?

[TwistedRiver]

Magic Message pony symbols are notorious for not being stable, I swear some of them could disintegrate by just looking at them wrong so don't beat yourself up too much over it. I've not done anything too horrible that I can think of since I reached adulthood, but in my youth I did horrible things to my ponies, including coming up with the brilliant false memory that Snuzzle was originally white and using every cleaning method (and some other "methods") I knew of to get her back to white again. Luckily though I didn't realize it at the time, nothing I tried worked and Snuzzle stubbornly remained gray.

[mylittELLEpony]

G1 restoration is a passion of mine, so I personally never consider any of them "bait." Any issue can be fixed if you have the time and resources to put into it. That said, though, I was cleaning a particularly disgusting and moldy Teeny Tiny today and the toothbrush went RIGHT THROUGH her body. I'm 99% sure that the mold had completely eaten away at the plastic, since other bits around the hole I made started flaking off in the grossest way right afterwards, but...ugh. I felt terrible. This was my first "total loss" G1 and it broke my heart.

[orangepeachmango]

One Time I dyed a blank Sundance blue and then put yellow hair in, only to go to the sink to style the hair with hot water and..... Run all of the blue dye right into the blonde hair. 

Not the worst mistake possible, but did have to buy a whole new hank of hair to pay for it!

[Teddy]

I was re-pinking a SS Windwhistler's very faded hair a couple years ago. Instead of being super careful when doing the mane, I decided it'd be ok to just dunk her whole head in to make sure the mane came out even. Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened. The flocking on her head is now a soft pink as well. Oops. >.<

[Stormness_1]

Used my old straightener because I couldn't find my new one with temp settings, so I was switching it on and off to keep the temp low... until I forgot to switch it off and fried some hair. At least I could re-hair her though!!

[Jocelyn]

Similar to Stormness'...I made the mistake of thinking you could straighten a Totsy's hair just like a real MLP's. Now a chunk of my Totsy's hair is disintegrated and she'll have to be rehaired.

[bright rabbit 1]

I put too much pressure on Applejack's head while re rooting her to make Rapunzel. He head broke in half, luckily I had another Applejack that I was trying to sell so I borrowed her head.

[Emberly]

I had a very nice Quarterback with a lot of rust inside I think it was. So he went into an oxyclean bath for just a couple minutes to get it out. His symbol lost all it's color, now it's just white! And it happened so fast!

[NightGliderSA]

I had a very nice Quarterback with a lot of rust inside I think it was. So he went into an oxyclean bath for just a couple minutes to get it out. His symbol lost all it's color, now it's just white! And it happened so fast!

Oh my gosh! That is so scary - it could have happened to anyone 

I guess I have just been lucky so far then

[Shabi]

Used acetone to remove nail polish from g4 cutie mark. Ouch.

[Shaz]

Oh those Magic Message symbols. Back when I was new to ponies and didn't know there was such a thing as Magic Message ponies, I found a really grubby Magic Message Windy and hurried off to put her in warm soapy water and give her a good scrub....then it was 'Argh, her symbol's falling off! How? Why? Noooo!'

Beheading ponies (that sounds unnecessarily violent) for rehairing is alarming too. I have accidentally sliced necks or broken neck plugs before. It makes me feel so guilty! 'Don't worry, little pony, I'll repair you....oh, first I'll just add some more damage....'

[Artemesia's Garden]

Oh those Magic Message symbols. Back when I was new to ponies and didn't know there was such a thing as Magic Message ponies, I found a really grubby Magic Message Windy and hurried off to put her in warm soapy water and give her a good scrub....then it was 'Argh, her symbol's falling off! How? Why? Noooo!'

Beheading ponies (that sounds unnecessarily violent) for rehairing is alarming too. I have accidentally sliced necks or broken neck plugs before. It makes me feel so guilty! 'Don't worry, little pony, I'll repair you....oh, first I'll just add some more damage....'

I haven't done the magic message thing because the first one I bought already had a damaged symbol and I figured it out. But I have ripped a neck plug before.  It doesn't show from the outside, she looks great so I'll just keep her forever and then no-one will be disappointed to find the damage.

I started restoring on really baity ponies so I've not had too many serious disasters

I've had two or three goes at improving some of the ponies as my skills have improved. Particularly with hair.

[Eldarwen]

When I used acne cream on my childhood Baby Cuddles! It was back then when I didnt know how it would affect green/blue ponies. I've never had any other accidents when restoring ponies, but that Cuddles still makes me sad since it was my childhood pony! But luckily someone from the arena (Im sorry I cant remember your name right now ) fixed her for me! I am so grateful for that. Now she looks like new.

[lostpony]

I made most of the mistakes described here so far:  ripping a neck plug but not all the way and then Artemesia Floc told me to use a butterknife for that so I haven't repeated that mistake.  I soaked off a Magic message symbol before I knew there was such a thing but it was pretty messed up anyway.  I melted my share of hair with my old flatiron with no temp control but usually fakies and other toys not MLP's.  Ehem, just a little trim...

I've also bleached the heck out of a bunch of ponies before being informed that I'm not supposed to use bleach and for the most part I got really lucky and had great results with it, though I think I did yellow a yellowing SS Sundance worse than it already was and it remains to be seen what the long-term impacts will be on those ponies.

I think the most common thing I did wrong was frizzing hair by combing too roughly while trying to tame it, and I need to go back through my first ponies and defrizz them.  Fixable though, lucky lucky. 

Oh yes here's one not mentioned yet:  I used fabric softener too strong and soaked too long and found it can transfer some hair colors to the body. 

I actually ruined most of my dress shirts a few weeks ago soaking too long in Oxiclean too strong....that stuff isn't so safe if not used as directed, haha.  I gotta question my obsession with stronger, longer use of things than the instructions describe...

Not to worry, we all have our share of mistakes!  Just try to learn and not repeat them and ask questions first and tell after so fewer of us make fewer of the same mistakes.

Magic Motion symbols are too fragile anyway, so just repaint them and it's fine.  I have a Magic Hat that arrived with almost no symbol at all so I just redrew the symbols with colored ballpoint pens and it looks great.  I think rubbed symbols might be a good place to use those increasingly rare G1 stickers too, no?  Or some glitterpodge Yaaay.