Restoring hair to former glory

[Nekoi]

Hey guys!
I did a quick search, but if I missed a thread about this I'm sorry.

So, I started cleaning up my old ponies. Of course I started with the simpler ones, like Magic Star and Cherries Jubilee, where I used the tip I saw by Melinda at Retroblasting on youtube, and wrapped their mane around their necks and their tails wrapped around the back hoof and secured with papertowels.

Now... how do you decide how a pony used to look? I mean some you can tell used to be curly, and I use drinking straws on those...

But how do you do it? Do you try to find how they are "supposed" to look (mane and tail)? Or do you go with whatever you find prettier?

Thank you in advance for your input!

[hathorcat]

When you are doing the hair wrapped around the neck and leg...just be careful which colours you do this with as some of them are not colour fast and may stain the pony plastic.

As for styling - I always go with how they were released. So with most ponies that is as basic as a nice factory bouncy wave, candy candy corkscrew curls or just a classy sleek finish. Nothing complicated and just using promotional images and MOC sources to point you in the right direction.

[Katika]

Unless the hair is REALLY gross, I typically will leave even relatively messy curls alone if they appear to be factory. 

As far as treating hair, I usually comb conditioner through, let it dry (not sure if you have to do that), rinse it out with hot water and wrap *most* hair around the neck.  Most of the time, I skip wrapping the hair around their leg because for me at least, it ends up making the bottom of the tail too curly and then when I comb through after the hair dries, a lot of the time it just gets messy again.  Instead, I try to sort of curl/swoop the tail on the counter underneath the pony's body so that it still has a little flip to the end, as opposed to a spiral

[Nekoi]

hathorcat - thanks for the warning, yikes, had not thought of that! MOC was a good tip, I'll look for those I think I'd like to keep the original look as much as possible. (Though the corkscrews are driving me slightly crazy haha)

Katika - I wish they weren't REALLY gross, but because of sot - mine sadly are so the curls are giving me a pain. Thank you for the tip on the tail hair, I noticed that too when combing Cherries Jubilee, it turned a little messy again. I'll try your tip!

Thank you for your input