Eeks!!! Look what happened to my ponies!!!

[rayedelsol]

I have absolutely no idea about how to store these darlings, but if I may interject something for thought: If you had stored them together and something happened, it would have happened to all of them. At least in the baggies, it is isolated to certain ponies, and some came out just fine. I don't know if anything would have happened had they been stored in one baggie, but it is something to think about.

[BrightSide]

Oh gosh! :c I'm really sorry this happened to you.. it's good to hear that they cleaned up fairly well, if anything.

[SkyCakes]

I still store mine in baggies myself. Though I keep them open. I throw in the silica gel packs inside the boxes to dry everything up.

[Salli]

In the world of antique clothing/textiles people tend to cringe if anyone says the words 'plastic bag'. Plastic bags kind of create their own little eco-system inside them. Not to mention that when you put your pony in the bag, even if you have thoroughly cleaned her, she is taking into it her own micro-organisms. So your pony is trapped in a world of her and whatever she brought in with her. I have to think that lotion is a bad idea. Fuzzy stuff likes to grow in anything liquid. Also lotions have chemicals (just read the bottle) that can alter the color of your pony. It would be like making a chemical mixture and leaving your pony to soak in it for months/years. 

Having said that, I really don't know what the proper way is to 'store' ponies. I like to have mine out but sometimes you just can't. If I HAD to store them today, I would wrap them in acid-free tissue paper (like already suggested) and put them comfortably into lined cardboard boxes.

Is there a tutorial on how to store ponies properly long-term?

[scarletjul]

Aw, I'm so sorry! 

Hope you can get them all cleaned up.

[Desert Rose]

Oh dear that is just awfull

And now I'm starting to freak out cuz' I've had my ponies stored in ziplock bags in my room for almost a decade O.o However I have taken them out every now and then and checked them and they've always looked ok.

Could it be that you put lotion on them right before you put them in storage? Anyway I hope they clean up nicely for you again

[rtattles]

Thanks everyone! I'm in the process of cleaning the ponies up...VERY SLOWLY. I only have like 40 of them out and my collection has ballooned over 2000++ now. My last count was in 2005 at around 1980 ponies....so I definitely own a lot more now considering I've been buying G3s and G4s, on top of the frenzy purchases I've made when I visited the USA, UK and while studying in Australia. That's going to be a lot of shampoo and conditioner involved, and not to mention water, and BIG WATER BILLZ (emphasised by my mom everyday).

Not all is bad from the storage. I have ponies that made amazing recoveries from being bagged. In a way, it's bad because I know there's some bleaching process going on that I can't see, but I do have ponies that came out for the better!

Starflower had a BIG biro pen mark across her flank when I first got her 9 years ago. She was great everything except the biro mark and some blue eye-shadows. Somehow I forgot to trade or sell her off, since I was a little picky at the early stage of my collection. She was bagged and stored, and now the biro marks are mostly GONE!!!!! It's almost like magic - no sun, no bleach, no nothing. I think some bleaching must have occured in the bag or the mark broke down on its own. You can still see a very faint mark on Starflower, but compared to what she had years ago, it's like 98% improvement.
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Wind Whistler had her hair re-pinked some years ago, but I didn't do a very careful job, so her body was stained by the pink dye. WHen I removed her from her bag, the pink hair is largely faded almost to white, but the positive side is that all the body stains have disappeared too.
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Baby Blue Ribbon is probably one of my best self-recovery achievement. lol I got her in an ebay lot. The pictures were tiny as hobbits, and when she appeared at my door step it was ZOMG. SHe was covered in BLACK markers all over her. Some lovely monster kid decided to colour her inner ears with a permernant black marker and give her black hoof polish and black lipstick. I rubbed her with acetone but that did little to improve her looks. She's another bagged and forgotten pony and look what happened to her now. The black markers have faded A LOT. The yellowish parts are what's left of th black markers, whcih I thought is pretty amazing. I think given time with sunning and more storage, she might just return to mint. lololol MArkers mostly gone from lips and display side hooves.
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[lovesbabysquirmy]

See, even if it was frustrating realizing that some were a mess, you get to take them all out and clean them and admire them, so not such a bad thing after all!

[hathorcat]

Wow! Miracle ponies!! Maybe the stains "sweat" out of the plastic? Thats a pretty cool discovery GC!

[Ginger]

Starflower had a BIG biro pen mark across her flank when I first got her 9 years ago. She was great everything except the biro mark and some blue eye-shadows. Somehow I forgot to trade or sell her off, since I was a little picky at the early stage of my collection. She was bagged and stored, and now the biro marks are mostly GONE!!!!! It's almost like magic - no sun, no bleach, no nothing. I think some bleaching must have occured in the bag or the mark broke down on its own. You can still see a very faint mark on Starflower, but compared to what she had years ago, it's like 98% improvement.

WOW! That's what happened to my American Girl doll! My sister colored all over her leg when she was a kid with a pen. Then roughly 10 years later I took her out of storage and the ink marks were all gone!!

[princessluna11706]

Yikes!  I have 95% of my collection stored in boxes too o_O  I'm glad most of yours were cleanable though.  When you come visit, we gotta see if they're ok!  I have these things that catch and collect water in the air, about three or four in the room, so I think that helps.  It's shocking to see how much water they've collected in a month!

[UnicornTamer]

Oh, that's sad. Hope you can restore them all up nice and good!