Restoration help, Please! Pindot? Smooze? Highlighter marks?

[Carcina]

Okay, let me give a little bit of backstory.

Way back around Christmas, my grandmother said I could go on Ebay and search for ponies and get anything I wanted that stayed around twenty dollars. And as a new collector with only about 7 ponies to my name, I was SUPER excited to pick something out.
I found a really nice lot of ponies, I believe it was 17 ponies for about 21 bucks--And free shipping! It seemed like a really awesome deal to me. They were all very pretty g3 ponies, and one g1.
They were listed as "played with" condition and had ratty hair, but none of them appeared to be in too shabby of condition, especially for someone like me who isn't picky. I didn't see any marks, just some sorta worn cutie marks.

The g1 of the group was Surprise, who is my all-time favourite pony, so that only made this seem more perfect.
What should've been a warning sign to me but wasn't, was that there was only one picture of these guys... In Surprise's case, her display side was pictured.


I got her in hand, and her non-display side looked like THIS.
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also, she had several dots on her face that i THINK are pindot or maybe smooze?? But I'm really not sure.
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(NOTE: its much easier to see in this picture if you tilt your screen back or look at it from below!)

I was pretty devastated. The majority of the other ponies had a lot of unexpected marks too, but not nearly as bad as poor Surprise.
The seller offered for me to send back all the ponies and get a full refund-- But it was too late. I was attached to this poor girl (and I loved a few of the others from the lot).
Even so, the seller didn't want to leave me unsatisfied and refunded me 11 dollars (about half of what I paid), which I thought was nice.

THAT BRINGS ME TO THE POINT OF THIS POST... (I'm so sorry for my rambling problem..)

I am determined to get this Surprise looking acceptable if it's the last thing I do.
I want to hear from people who regularly fix up baity ponies on what they recommend!
I found that GOO-GONE was actually taking off the marks on her wings, but only if I used an excessive amount, and I quickly ran out and need to buy more.
Will sun fading help me at all?

Also, with the "Pin dot". I have tried several times to run her under hot water and scrape away at the areas with my nails like I've been told... But it simply hasn't done anything!!

I know this pony will never be perfect but I'm determined to get her looking as good as I can!
Thank you for the help!

[WingsOfMasquerade]

I fix up ponies pretty often.
If I get baits & like 1 of them isn't "that baity" I always try to restore rather than customize. It's good to see that you'd like to restore Surprise here, as it looks like she's probably recoverable. It's a lot of marks but it looks like you could probably get them all off. Things I would suggest to try:

Magic Eraser
Rub while wetted on the marks but keep it away from the symbols

Toothbrush w/Scouring powder
Wet toothbrush, put scouring powder all in there (like Ajax or Bon Ami) and really scrub/grind on the marks, keep off the symbols
If it doesn't go right away, wet the marks/soak the marks with water, then scrub 'em again

Pin dot-
That's what it looks like on the lip there. Water may need to be boiling. Hot tap might not be good enough. You can dunk her nose in boiling water then scratch with a fingernail or hard, white plastic thing. Metal nail file (MUST be metal!) brushing the file lightly over the plastic after dunking in boiling water just on that pin dotted area there. The point is to get the black dots out and not push anything else into the 'pores' of the plastic.

If any of the marks won't come off after the magic eraser or scouring powder ...like they turned out to be pen scribble, marker residue or something annoying like that, they ARE black and will likely sunfade. Marker can't scrub off like 99% of the time. The ink soaks into the plastic. Sunfading can take months on the sill (cover symbols & hair with tin foil to prevent fading) but it will 99% of the time get rid of non-pink & non-red inks. Be sure to check her fade progress often.

Good luck with your Surprise!
I hope she is an easier clean up then expected.

[Starshinescustoms]

I'm sorry they weren't as described - it's horrible when that happens 
At least the seller was decent enough to refund half the cost, though. There is a positive here - you can buy more ponies with the money now! 

As for cleaning up Surprise, while I would normally say sunfade, I'm fairly certain Surprise is prone to burning? (maybe someone else can confirm this.. or tell me I'm wrong  ).
For the pindot, I use Rhys method: http://mlparena.com/archive/Forums//viewtopic/t=181104.html
though I never find that water from the tap get's hot enough. I usually have to soak in water straight from a boiled kettle, but please be very careful! Don't do what I usually do and give yourself burns... 
Afterwards be sure she is thoroughly dry inside or her tail will rust.  You can do that by taking off her head or squeezing the water out of the tail hole and dabbing at it with a towl (can take a while and sometimes you think you've got it all when you haven't!)

As WingsOfMasquerade said, the magic eraser may help, but keep it away from the symbols and eyes. It's not as bad as acetone, but still best to keep it away. For really stubborn marks you can use acetone, but obviously not on anything painted!

It looks like she's got at least two cancer spots. Sadly there's no known method of removing these (yet)  . You could paint over them with white acrylic paint, but I personally leave them as they are as I don't think the paint looks right.

Once you're finished cleaning her body, unplait her hair and give it a good wash, then use some conditioner. I discovered that if you gently comb it from the ends (while it's wet and has conditioner in it) while the hair lays flat against the bath, you can get even the worst of tangles out quite easily, and for some reason it seems to leave the hair much softer! Just don't yank it too hard as you don't want missing plugs 
If you wrap her tail around one of her back legs and leave it to dry, you should get a nice curl in it 


This website might help. It's a fantastic resource and has proven to be invaluable to me:
http://www.mlppreservationproject.com/

I hope she cleans up nicely for you! We'd love to see pictures when she's done 

[Carcina]

Thank you for your suggestions, but unfortunately I've already tried a magic eraser (almost immediately) as well as acetone, and they did nothing at all.

[hathorcat]

If you have had no luck with magic eraser then the next bet is sun fading. She is white thankfully and I would think all of those marks should come off with it [excluding the brown dot at her neck line...that looks like an age mark unfortunately].

Make sure to cover her hair and her symbols, her eyes and her blush and then pop her in the sun. Keep a regular eye on her and over time the marks should fade away; they look like pen so thats the best type of thing to sun fade away

Good luck!