Quote from: lowpolyzoe on April 18, 2022, 06:08:34 PM

Hey, does anyone have any tutorials (written or video) on how to get started rehairing a small G4? I've never been able to get their heads off without breaking the neck ring, and I believe to get to the washer I'll have to remote the stump-thing that the head turns on. Does anyone have any resources onhand that could help? Thank you

Hmm...I'm pretty sure I saw or read a nice tutorial somewhere when I first customized a G4 but that was about ten years ago and I don't know how to find it now.  But I can tell you how I do it currently!  I assume you mean the standard size brushable G4.  First, a warning - this method is somewhat dangerous as it involves boiling water and somewhat-risky use of a razor-sharp blade!

So, basically I use a saucepan of boiling water, tongs, a towel, and an X-acto knife with a fresh, pointy blade.  While you wait for the water to boil you can cut off the mane as close to the head as you can, and the tail unless you want to have it intact.  Once the water is boiling, just put the pony right in there, and you can turn off the heat at this time if you are just prepping the one pony. Let her simmer for a minute or so.  You can poke her with the tongs and she should feel soft.  Pull her out with the tongs and put her on the towel - be very careful as she may be full of hot water.  Use your hands wrapped in the towel to pop her head off.  Now here is the part where you can very easily injure yourself.  Stand the pony on her legs so the neck plug is straight up.  You are going to use the X-acto knife blade to CAREFULLY cut between the white plug and the colored pony neck.  Ideally your hand that is holding the pony is AWAY from the neck.  I wear leather gloves and just try to be very careful about what direction I am cutting.  Not only is this risky to you, but because the plug is a harder material than the pony neck, it is kind of easy to slip and cut through the neck.  I will alternate between doing this and putting the pony back in the water to reheat/re-soften, until I have cut all the way around the plug.  I wonder if adding acetone to the equation would help loosen the plug glue...I think I might have tried that once...hmm.  Anyway once the plug is loose you can remove it and get to the tail!

By the way, to remove the hair from inside the head I will pop it back in the hot water to resoften, then remove it and scrape the hair in there with some forceps/scissor blade/whatever.  Alternate scraping and heating as needed.  Some are easy, some are incredibly hard.  Again make sure you hold the head in the towel so you don't burn your hands on the hot plastic.

Anyway, it is quite the process, those plugs are really well glued sometimes, as is the hair.    I usually try to do a batch of several at a time so I have a rhythm going and a constant flow of pony parts between the towel area and the pot of water.

If you hate it and want a prepped G4 send me a PM, I always have several prepped ones sitting around.

Also, for the love of everything, cut with the knife going *away* from your body and off-hand. Then if it slips, you're just cutting air, not another part of your body (like your other arm, chest, leg, etc.)

Good luck and have fun!

Very pretty! I love her color combo! ^_^

Why do I always get ideas for custom ponies when I'm supposed to be working on homework? *sighs, and jots the idea down in a notebook for later*

Quote from: Kazzellin on February 19, 2022, 07:23:59 PM

Edit: It's been a hot minute since I've even been on the Arena; how do we post photos, these days? 

Hey! Welcome back The Arena doesn't host photos anymore so you need to find somewhere that does. I use Imgur, but there's Postimages.org, Imgbb, and a few others that are free. Upload your photos there and copy the img url and paste it into your post

Cool! Can't recall whether I have an imgur account or not. Guess I'll need to find out! Not today though; homework calls.

Wheres the MN pony meet up 2022?

Possibly at Aurora's little farm this spring, but it depends on covid shannies. If you're not already on it, we've a group chat going on FB Messenger; look for the MN MLP group, and you should find it. Then, one of us can invite you to the chat. Just be forewarned we tend to be off-topic a lot, since it's mainly just the group members talking about whatever. If you want to PM me you IRL name so we know it's not a random person (which has happened before--channel spam isn't fun), that would be great!

I just don't understand why these toy companies love using as much paper and cardboard they can get their hands on. My young niece loves LOL dolls and they seem to come with a lot of packaging too. I don't remember packaging being this excessive with my toys when I was younger!

It's another example of the few ruining it for everyone else.

The hard-to-open packaging, the plastic shells that are now kinda slippery, the 14+ twist ties holding dolls to the cardboard backing, the fact that you cannot just slide the bubble off the back card--all the myriad little things you need to do to free whatever it is you're buying from the confined of it's packaging?

All of it is an attempt to stop theft. 

The packages are so hard to open now because thieves would open the packages in the stores, take the toys, and leave the packaging behind. So they made opening the toys really time consuming to prevent thieves from doing that. Which is why thieves now will, when given the choice, just take the toy, package and all, to either sell it online or give it to their kids (who won't be knowledgeable enough to wonder about the process, and sometimes are even included in the thieves' shoplifting).

(Why, no, working retail for 20+ years, including at a TRU, hasn't made me frustrated about it at all, whyever do you ask? )

Except the confetti--that's more likely just Hasbro being silly ponies and continuing the "party!" atmosphere around the CMC since... year 3, was it?

I may have to hunt down this set despite the packaging--that Luna is lovely!

Hello everyone, took me long enough but here I am.
I have another event I do not have the option to reschddule and have already paid for the same day and mostly the same time.
I want to come say hallo at a minimum, but I won't be able to regularly attend the event.

 

That’s all right, Bianca! We’ll miss you! Hopefully, we’ll see you for the next one!

Main post has been updated! 😃

All right! Looks like Labor Day weekend is the winner, with August 21/22 being a close second! Now we get to figure out location! For which we should probably make some calls before we have the vote, since not everyplace will be available.