Advice on restoring Gingerbread?

[MysticIceDragon]

I guess I'm going to survey how good Party Time looks. If she looks good then I'll keep the pair, and clean Gingerbread and see where to go. If she doesn't change color, I guess she is bait, and I'll think of something... Dyeing her might be neat. I'll keep you all posted

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Well... given her age and condition, you can't really do much to improve her. She's just one of those ponies with bad QC....

Gingerbread eventually turns the color of real gingerbread, LOL

You can paint her white with acrylic paint, but obviously that is only covering up the problem and eventually chemistry will happen, and you'll have leaching paint and plasticizer. 

But yeah, ponies with fancy paint jobs or gimmicks like Twinkle Eyes or mechanisms, DO NOT use Oxi-clean or hydrogen peroxide. 

And NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER use acne cream of any kind on a pony, for any reason, for any length of time!!!

[LadyMoondancer]

It's just really hard to find a nice Gingerbread.  :/ 

I wouldn't say she's "bait" because that's kind of like saying a flutter ponies with her wings missing is bait;   it's something that is going to happen to most flutter ponies and most Gingerbreads.  Your Gingerbread doesn't have a bunch of age spots ('pony cancer'), which means she is still doing pretty well for who she is.

Edit:  Also, yes, some of the ponies in this pose are hard as ROCKS.  I assume it's because of the plasticizer leeching out over time or something.  It's just weird, it's so often ponies in this pose.

[Strawberrysweets]

Have you checked for rust? Mine have spots cause of rust. Not cleaned it 100% yet but got the spots much weaker.
but a sun bath is best option.
http://www.mlppreservationproject.com/body.html#SunFading

Not going to be easy covering the cutiemark consider her gingerbread men have white spots in them. On that I suggest just cover that and paint in the white in them on after the sunbleaching.

[LadyMoondancer]

I think sun bathing will just cause Gingerbread to burn (darken), sadly.

If you do try it then be sure to cover up her mane and tail, it will fade her pink streak to white.

[Baby Sugarberry]

Sunfading doesn't work on certain ponies, including Gingerbread, BnG Bouquet, Cherry Treats and (most) Starshines.  All of the ones with milky-white rather than opaque white plastic suffer from burns.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

As far as I've seen, peroxide baths seem to not have too much of an effect on the cutie mark or even the paint, but that may be unexplored territory. I would try an oxiclean bath first, as that seems to be less harsh than the peroxide.

DO NOT PUT A TWINKLE-EYE PONY IN OXYCLEAN OR PEROXIDE.

You will ruin their eyes.  Oxy also makes a number of hair colours bleed and/or bleach, it's really NOT safe for cleaning ponies that aren't going to be bait / custom projects.  Ditto for acne cream; it bleaches coloured ponies and yellows pale ones, and the effects can take months or years to show up and are irreversible. 

Unfortunately your Gingerbread already looks toasted - too much UV exposure would be my guess as to her current colouration, and there isn't a decent known solution to that yet.

Aw, dang! Thank you for the heads up, I've seen some that swear by it for anything and assumed it was all good to go!

[Artemesia's Garden]

Doing a general clean first might help you to assess what further treatments to use. Putting her in very hot or boiled water and scrubbing with dish soap and a soft toothbrush is what I do. Shampooing and conditioning the hair helps too. When the pony is softened from being in the hot water you can try to twist her head off, a lot of twinkle eyes seem to end up with hardened bodies and need warmth before the plastic will loosen up. She may have dirt or rust on the inside of the body that's showing through as dark staining. Once she's had a good all over clean you will be able to see what are permanent stains and what will lift off.

I agree with this but I'd soak for 24h in warm water (will go cold obviously) and then only use hot water on the neck to get the neck seam open. Soaking for a long time also makes the neck seam much easier to get into as well as the heat. I'd avoid soaking in dish soap or anything other than water because of the TEs.

I'm not sure it's good to soak in very hot/boiled water as this can damage the hair.

I use a cuticle stick to hook the tail out if the washer is rusty, might be worth checking?  Never remove the clamp from the tail hair, just the washer if need be. 

Also I'd use toothpaste after the dish soap as sometimes the mild abrasive gets some extra stuff off. Just avoid the TEs with anything other than water.

You can shampoo and condition the hair last and wrap around the pony to dry.

Make sure she is thoroughly dry before you put her back together, you can loosed the tail by pushing back a little way in to the pony to help it dry. Some people check inside the legs with a cotton bud to check the insides are dry before reassembly.

Best of luck

Post Merge: November 17, 2017, 04:06:30 PM

As far as I've seen, peroxide baths seem to not have too much of an effect on the cutie mark or even the paint, but that may be unexplored territory. I would try an oxiclean bath first, as that seems to be less harsh than the peroxide.

DO NOT PUT A TWINKLE-EYE PONY IN OXYCLEAN OR PEROXIDE.

You will ruin their eyes.  Oxy also makes a number of hair colours bleed and/or bleach, it's really NOT safe for cleaning ponies that aren't going to be bait / custom projects.  Ditto for acne cream; it bleaches coloured ponies and yellows pale ones, and the effects can take months or years to show up and are irreversible. 

Unfortunately your Gingerbread already looks toasted - too much UV exposure would be my guess as to her current colouration, and there isn't a decent known solution to that yet.

Aw, dang! Thank you for the heads up, I've seen some that swear by it for anything and assumed it was all good to go!

Yeah sadly there is a lot of poor advice out there.  Some good advice on here though because people really do their research. She has gone tanned but I think there is a lot of dirt as well that might come off, so you might be able to improve her a lot.

[MysticIceDragon]

Some good advice on here though because people really do their research. She has gone tanned but I think there is a lot of dirt as well that might come off, so you might be able to improve her a lot.

If I can get her looking like a lightly baked sugar cookie I'd say that's an improvement lol. Might I ask why you suggest not taking the tail clamp away? I've understood replacing it will prevent future rusting

[Baby Sugarberry]

-> Dish soap (assuming it doesn't include an abrasive) doesn't harm paint* nor iridescence.
-> Hot water doesn't harm normal nylon hair**.  Boiling water can be used to set curls.  Hotter than that can melt it, i.e. curling irons, flat irons, possibly hair dryers and the like. 
-> Tail clamps can be removed, and should be, only if they are rusting.  Usually it's the washer that rusts.
If a tail clamp has to go, it should be replaced with a nylon zip-tie so the tail doesn't fall apart.
-> Tails should be left separate during drying.  Personally I leave mine apart for at least several days, up to a week, to guarantee they're 100% dry inside before reassembling.

* Excluding Magic Message ponies, their symbols are notoriously fragile to almost everything.  Wipe gently with a damp cloth and then leave well enough alone.  Do not soak, do not use chemicals.
** Colour change hair, such as on the sunshine ponies can be very easily damaged and I wouldn't subject it to even boiling water. Tinsel is also more delicate, especially on G3's.

[MysticIceDragon]

None of you are going to believe this... She's completely clean and white inside!

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So I scrubbed her (away from the cutie marks and eyes) with dish soap, and then with a little toothpaste as suggested (again away from the delicates), and no color changed. A VERY mild amount of dirt washed away, revealing what I think are the beginnings of cancer, sigh. She's not so bad, being this cream color I guess, but now I'm worried about the cancer spreading to my other ponies.

[Baby Sugarberry]

'Cancer' (ugh I really hate that's what it's coined) aka vinyl deterioration or age spots, is not contagious.  It's the natural breakdown of the unstable composite plastic material.  Your other ponies are in no danger from Gingerbread's presence.  The fact that she's so white inside pretty much proves she's been toasted via UV, sadly. :c

[Strawberrysweets]

Dang :C
Kinda glad we only have sun from 13.Feb to 31.Oct.

[gold.standard]

It's just really hard to find a nice Gingerbread.  :/ 

I wouldn't say she's "bait" because that's kind of like saying a flutter ponies with her wings missing is bait;   it's something that is going to happen to most flutter ponies and most Gingerbreads.  Your Gingerbread doesn't have a bunch of age spots ('pony cancer'), which means she is still doing pretty well for who she is.

Edit:  Also, yes, some of the ponies in this pose are hard as ROCKS.  I assume it's because of the plasticizer leeching out over time or something.  It's just weird, it's so often ponies in this pose.

Yeah I've noticed twinkle eyes in particular suffer a lot from this!

[MysticIceDragon]

'Cancer' (ugh I really hate that's what it's coined) aka vinyl deterioration or age spots, is not contagious.  It's the natural breakdown of the unstable composite plastic material.  Your other ponies are in no danger from Gingerbread's presence.  The fact that she's so white inside pretty much proves she's been toasted via UV, sadly. :c

All this research I did on ponies years ago is proving to be LIES now that I can collect! Thank you for clearing that up.

I guess I just have a toasty Gingerbread now. I don't want to paint her  (plus I think if she gets oily again it would destroy the paint job) though I did look at how dye would affect a pony of her color (and how to remove those eyes, because holy cow guys those are her best part). It would ruin her cutie mark though and it's in pretty good shape so I'll just leave her be.