Dry hair with original curl or conditioned and re-curled?

[Eskara1862]

My wonderful father found a batch of G1 ponies at a garage sale for me. They were clearly not played with much and spent most of their time in a garage.  This is both boon and bane.  The pink hair is so gorgeous and perfect! The ponies are covered in fuzzy mold!  It's not a question of if they'll be washed; they all will with a little bleach to kill the mold.

My conundrum comes in with the hair.  Their hair is still in the original curl on many of them (Lady Flitter, high Flyer, Dancing Butterflies), but it's very dry and somewhat messy. I can condition it and make the hair look perfect and super beautiful, but I'll destroy the original curl if I do that.  If I leave the hair alone, it'll be dry and a little frizzed.  Which do you prefer?  Help me decide how to fix these up!

[Bellevi]

If you gently condition the hair with cold water, you can just "reset" the original curl. I've done it with my Raincurl.

[Baby Sugarberry]

If you are very careful, you can wash curly hair without destroying the original curls.  You just have to gently massage the conditioner into the curls while holding them in place, and be careful while rinsing to support 'em.  Dry partially with tissues before you leave the pony to completely dry, so the water doesn't stretch out the curl. Getting the gunk off is more important than curl, moldy ponies are a health hazard!

[flowersinherhair]

I'm gonna echo what has already been said - I got a similar bunch of ponies over the summer, who were really dirty but had (messy) original curls. I just washed their hair using cold water, not even bothering to be careful about supporting the curls or anything. I just shampooed like normal, and combed with a fine-toothed comb while conditioning. After I dried them off, I just kinda scrunched up their curls with my hand, and their hair dried beautifully! But yeah, cold water is the trick!

[Shenanigans]

I'm a bit torn, but I do love soft hair so I would probably condition them

[Elisto]

I've heard a lot of people say you can wash/condition the hair and still keep the curls, but I can't seem to do it, even following these instructions here. If I comb it of even just try to smooth the loose strands, the curls WILL come out almost completely, so I really don't understand what the trick is.

Good luck if you try this, and I hope you're successful. I'd like to see pictures one day of these supposedly successfully-saved curls.

[flowersinherhair]

I'd like to see pictures one day of these supposedly successfully-saved curls.

Here's one of the ones that I did, following the process I described before. All those curls in her mane are original, I didn't re-do anything!

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I wonder if the trick (other than cold water) is to comb the hair only while the conditioner is in? I can imagine that the curls might fall apart a bit if they were to be combed after the hair was patted dry. Hmm.

[Starly]

I never clean ponies with hot water, only cold.

[hathorcat]

Personally? As much as I love soft and silky hair, I would rather keep the original curl and not risk it loosening during a wash.

[tulagirl]

I didn't read the other responses. I would clean them as soon as possible with that mold and wash the hair gently...and wait a while before you decide.  I have a couple of ponies that I have left in a frizzy original curl...until I can decide if I want to change them. I have had them this way for months.  I just can't decide.  So my thought is wait until you are sure, but clean them quickly. I prefer ponies to have soft hair, but its not always an easy decision to make.

[karrie91]

If it were me... and I'm a bad collector lol.. I would wash them and make them feel pretty and clean. Default curls don't really look nice if their no longer neat. I just would see them as unhappy if it was so dry and would end up washing/conditioning it so they look nice and petty in the heard.

But.. that's bad advice because I'm not a 'value' collector.

[ZennaBug]

I love original curl, but if it's scraggly then it just looks nasty.  I am going to echo the cold water and conditioner suggestion.  You can at least tame the original curls and defrizz them a bit that way.  If they still look bad, then I would personally recurl them.  I had to do that for my Streaky.

[PinkRosedust]

Augh! A problem I'm currently dealing with, and with more than one pony. I have washed a Rosedust before and salvaged some of the original curl, but I've been nervous to try it again lately for some reason. I personally would like to eventually wash the hair of all my G1s who need it, even if they have original curl, and just do my best to preserve the curl. I find it a *little* difficult to look at ponies with messed up curls on my shelves. Not HORRIBLY difficult, but a little. :/

[LadyMoondancer]

I always use super hot water and sort of "squash" the hair in my hand.  That makes the curls form in their original style, more often than not.  Also don't have the water running in too big of a stream.