Discussion: Cures for pony cancer

[Baby Sugarberry]

'pony cancer', 'age spots' and vinyl deterioration all refer to the same thing - the small brownish diffuse spots that eventually show up on most old ponies.  That doesn't necessarily mean they're all caused (and likely aren't!) by the same process.  Every batch of ponies had a different formula, and they've all aged differently so at this point it's impossible to control all variables.   As for the bacteria / mold vector, I'm not convinced it's causality and not commonality.  Just because two things show up together doesn't mean one was the direct result of the other.

Paint doesn't so much deteriorate the plastic as it does deteriorate the condition of the pony - because the pigments and sometimes other chemicals (sealants, binders, glues, suspension medium, etc.) are attracted to the porous vinyl and leech out.  The edges may 'bloom' over the months/years, making the paint fuzzy or leaving rings of discolouration around the affected area.  Not all paints do, for the vast majority of commercial pad printed symbols there are no problems, while over in the Nirvanas it's sometimes impossible to find certain ponies with much symbol left at all.  Structurally the vinyl itself is fine, it just looks ugly.

Temperature, humidity and exposure to reactants (including UV) are the main factors in breakdown acceleration.  Certain components are more or less susceptible - that's why we can sunfade most ponies, destroying the ink pigments without the vinyl being impacted. Not all pigments are equally light-fast (aka resistant to UV) - reds/oranges tend to be the weakest, blue the strongest. There's no way to predict what exactly will happen when you take Specific Pony A and combine it with Specific Paint (or other chemical) B. 

 In general though, paint doesn't accelerate deterioration; it causes its own problems instead (primarily dye leeching) which are often even more unsightly than the original issue.

[Foxtale]

I personally don't care about the appearance of the spots, the thing the only thing that bothers me is the fact that it may spread from pony to pony?

[FarDreamer]

I personally don't care about the appearance of the spots, the thing the only thing that bothers me is the fact that it may spread from pony to pony?

It doesn't.  People used to worry about that, but it doesn't seem to be an issue.

Post Merge: December 09, 2016, 11:57:44 AM

Do you mind if I quote parts of this on the site?  You explain it really well.  Customizers have come up with a lot of solutions for this, such as sealing under the paint, etc.

'pony cancer', 'age spots' and vinyl deterioration all refer to the same thing - the small brownish diffuse spots that eventually show up on most old ponies.  That doesn't necessarily mean they're all caused (and likely aren't!) by the same process.  Every batch of ponies had a different formula, and they've all aged differently so at this point it's impossible to control all variables.   As for the bacteria / mold vector, I'm not convinced it's causality and not commonality.  Just because two things show up together doesn't mean one was the direct result of the other.

Paint doesn't so much deteriorate the plastic as it does deteriorate the condition of the pony - because the pigments and sometimes other chemicals (sealants, binders, glues, suspension medium, etc.) are attracted to the porous vinyl and leech out.  The edges may 'bloom' over the months/years, making the paint fuzzy or leaving rings of discolouration around the affected area.  Not all paints do, for the vast majority of commercial pad printed symbols there are no problems, while over in the Nirvanas it's sometimes impossible to find certain ponies with much symbol left at all.  Structurally the vinyl itself is fine, it just looks ugly.

Temperature, humidity and exposure to reactants (including UV) are the main factors in breakdown acceleration.  Certain components are more or less susceptible - that's why we can sunfade most ponies, destroying the ink pigments without the vinyl being impacted. Not all pigments are equally light-fast (aka resistant to UV) - reds/oranges tend to be the weakest, blue the strongest. There's no way to predict what exactly will happen when you take Specific Pony A and combine it with Specific Paint (or other chemical) B. 

 In general though, paint doesn't accelerate deterioration; it causes its own problems instead (primarily dye leeching) which are often even more unsightly than the original issue.

[vampyrefay]

so it doesn't spread to other ponies?

[Gingerbread]

I have had ponies with age spots next to ponies without age spots for years and IMO no, they do not spread from pony to pony. As has been said, it depends on the pony and their own plastic. For instance, Gingerbread is very prone to cancer, I do not have many without the odd brown spot. However they have been next to my other TEs and other ponies and none have developed any age spots at all.

[LadyMoondancer]

Same as Gingerbread, I have had ponies with age spots sitting next to other ponies for years and it hasn't "spread." 

[Artemesia's Garden]

People might think it spreads because external conditions contribute so if one pony gets it the others are likely to get it too just because they are stored in the same environmental conditions.  The thing to do is to just make sure your ponies are stored in stable conditions out of direct sunlight.  And that when you wash them you don't get water inside them.  Heat or at least fluctuations in temperature, humidity and expose to UV light probably all contribute to age spots.  Some characters were just made with bad batches of plastic sadly and seem to develop them more quickly than others..

[Taxel]

Geeze no, I don't believe in baiting ponies for minor issues.  And I think most people agree.

I never said that you do but look at "bait lots" in sales threads and on eBay, or photos of "baits" in Customs threads. What plenty of people call "bait" is crazy, like they expect literal toys from the 80s to be in perfect condition. Its ridiculous and completely unsustainable. The other day I saw a lot of like 10 ponies. They were dirty (barely!) and had messy hair. It would've taken barely any effort to clean them. Another similar lot said "bait or restoration"... soap and a comb is NOT restoration. Its basic cleaning! Which you should do with everything secondhand that you buy :/

Most of the ponies I've seen being labelled as baits for sale are completely fine. Maybe a little dirty, slightly messed up paint, a bit faded symbols,  a few marks, or hair issues (cuts/missing/etc). But they're fine. They have no major flaws or serious issues that warrant baiting, like missing huge chunks of plastic or being 100% covered in marker/rust/stains/etc. They would look wonderful on the shelves of not-so-picky collectors after a little TLC, or at worst a rehair if its really needed.

At this point I think we as a community need to start accepting ponies for what they are: simple plastic toys made for children that were not intended to be collected for decades. We should take better care of the ponies that are still around, flaws or not, and stop baiting just because a pony is dirty or has tangled hair.

Yes . . . I've made customs in the past and I enjoy looking at customs, but dang it seems like some ponies get baited for having the least flaw.  (G4 customs are in a different boat, since every time one is bought off the peg, Hasbro makes another . . . G4 customs of current ponies don't reduce the number of "original" G4s around.)

Hasbro used to sell blank white G3s for customization . . . I wish some intrepid customizers would band together and produce blank ponies in G1 molds.

Exactly. I have a small handful of customs, mostly fakie/repro/G3. I used to love customs because yes, at a certain point you can't fix a pony or it'll be 100% custom anyways. And G1s just have such beautiful molds that can be transformed amazingly. But at this point? I just can't... after seeing what people consider "bait" and justifies destroying perfectly good ponies, no thanks. If I ever want a very special custom for some reason again, I'll provide my own actually bait-worthy bait.

It would be really awesome if the Genie project could eventually expand to provide blanks, or if more people produced/sold homemade blanks (resin, 3D printing, etc). It seems like none of the blank producers last for very long. Maybe because people won't pay a fair price for them, who knows.

[Baby Sugarberry]

In regards to bait / custom blanks:

Basic economics dictates that as long as there are original ponies floating around that are less expensive than new 'blanks' to produce, they are more likely to wind up as customs.  While I don't like it either, I do understand how it happens.  Secondly, many sellers list lots as 'bait' to avoid being hassled by buyers who come back later and complain that the item wasn't as described.  By picking the worst possible description (similarly, 'as is', 'job lot', 'in need of restoration', 'play condition', 'not collector quality') they avoid some liability because ebay is very much biased towards buyers when it comes to resolution of issues.

Do you mind if I quote parts of this on the site?  You explain it really well.  Customizers have come up with a lot of solutions for this, such as sealing under the paint, etc.

If that's directed at me, by all means, take anything you like. While I'm by no means an expert in plastics, I do have a background in museum sciences and the golden rule for conservation is "Do as little as possible." balanced against the collection serving its purpose of course.  Followed closely by "Everything you do is futile, in the end entropy always wins". *soft laughter*

[lostpony]

Production quantity has a lot to do with whether a blank can be made for a price people will pay:  it's almost impossible to produce something cheaper than the cheapest common G1s so attrition is going to be a fact of life for quite a while.  Unfortunately.

If there is a thread that discusses pony cancer, I don't think anyone will be surprised when I eventually come sniffing around.

I got most of my first ponies about a year ago in lots on eBay called "bait lots" and I gotta tell everypony, I did my darnedest to clean up each and every one which is what led me to get so piqued about pony "cancer" by which I mean the brown spots with the darker spot in the middle. 

Cancer blah blah in spoiler cuz it goes on and on, even though it is the part of this post that is actually on topic.

Spoiler

There are plenty of reasons to fear it might be alive, first that it is found mostly in both the head parts and body parts of the same pony, which doesn't mean it spread between parts as both parts were exposed to the same conditions, and both parts are often made of the same batch of the same material, and it is sometimes in just the head or just the body so...that's inconclusive.  The growth (or "development") pattern is why I suspect it of being alive....almost perfectly circular unless there is a reason to not be circular, just like cultured colonies on agar...and the theory that you can kill anything living by boiling is flawed too, because the original form of life on this planet, which still survives at the continental ridge volcanoes on the ocean floor, are bacteria that thrive on temperatures even higher than boiling water on the surface. 

I had a terribly afflicted Moonstone, and needed to know more.  She was in terrible condition overall, by the way, and came from a group of ponies that had obviously been stored in heavily rat-infested and damp storage  conditions for a long long time (figured the eBay photos were bad, but nope...).  After doing everything I could think of I decideto have a little dissection and I cut into the cancer and found that it is in fact in the center of the material, furthest from the inner and outer surfaces.  The lighter brown is actually seeing the darker spot through the material, and where the dark has reached the surface is the darker brown.  When you cut through the lighter brown areas at an angle (like shaving into the material) you can actually see the edge of the different colors, looks like a tree ring actually. 

Next I bought a Bright Eyes at a good price in a small lot and thought I got a great deal on her until I discovered she has a spot on her forehead, and went back and saw it had been described and I didn't read carefully.  At first I didn't care for her much but figured I didn't want to lose a valuable pony without trying, so having heard that boiling "kills" the cancer I gave it a shot.  I was astounded when the spot disappeared!  leaving an off-white circle in her otherwise blue color.  I didn't care much for her dull plastic eyes so I put in Zirconias instead and really love her but...after almost a full year, that offwhite spot has darkened and then weeks later I can now see a darker spot forming in the center.  During the time I thought she was "cured", I experimented on a much more afflicted Fire Chief and I boiled him for days, and while the spots did fade to white, I also observed before and after with back-lighting and deep down, the spots are still there.  Oh yes he darkened too, but refreshed to bright white in peroxide sunfade and it seems a dry sunfade might have worked almost as fast.

Bright Eyes also had a touch of cancer at her neckline, in an odd shape that followed a hair (seemed like a non-real hair probably a pony hair, probably one of her own, or some other fiber:  it was reddish so had some colorant in it) that was trapped in the neck seam.  Before boiling her, I cut that spot away and sanded her smooth there and that area remains clear so far.

None of this establishes whether it is alive or chemical, but one thing is absolutely clear:  it takes a long time to develop or change so it is very hard to study and the only way to really learn anything conclusive about it requires carefully controlled scientific experiments with control groups, controlled conditions, and observation over a period of years.  And the right questions must be asked and the right conditions must be varied and the bottom line is, no one with credentials qualified to publish results we can all conclusively rely on is going to do it.  I intend to continue my experiments, with a new round this time including Gingerbread and a control group pony but will still fall short of the standards of "science" and will basically be meaningless aside from anecdotal value.

I don't think anyone has reported an "outbreak" across their collection caused by owning a few afflicted ponies.  Even if it is contagious, its spread seems to be contained within one pony so at worst, it's not going to spread to something it isn't pressed closely in direct contact with for a long time.

I will probably re-boil my afflicted Bright Eyes and continue to love her, and continue to love my afflicted Gingerbreads especially the first one because she was donated to me for cancer study by a very generous arena member and I'm only holding off on her treatment because I want to understand why Gingerbread darkens in the sun rather than whitens so I can be sure I can have the best chances of returning her to "service" of being enjoyed on display and handled, not sacrifice her.  In fact, I didn't sacrifice the Moonstone I dissected either:  she has a paper-thin amount of remaining material where I carved her spots away and is still boxed up in my pony archive and I'm not throwing her out or painting her over or anything else.

When I do a "custom", which I haven't done very many of (so far I've only done 1 from a G4 and finished up a couple of inherited other people's projects already started), I don't paint over the entire pony until I learn how to fuse the paint to the pony like the original eye and symbol paint.  Paint that just sits on the surface has a ticking time limit as the plasticizer leaches out and eventually must separate the paint.  I know the eye and symbol paint doesn't do this and maybe someone else has managed to learn what paint and how to use it to make the paint last over the long term.  Until I understand this, I'm not painting over any ponies because if I can't scrub it with a toothbrush and cleanser, it's not a pony (to me).  While we collect them, they are first and foremost toys, which must withstand play and be washable and be at least as loved as they were played with.  I also like my ponies to have played-with evidence:  pen marks of kid's initials on the bottoms of the hooves are fine.  Makeup by marker is OK too.  Haircuts are all right, though I don't care about original hair and actually like alt rehairs especially.  These are all just reasons to have that many more of each pony because each of them are unique and worthy of having alongside the same pony that is different in some way.

If you want to cut up yours or paint them over that's perfectly fine with me.  I'm not telling others what to do and it doesn't bother me when I see destroyed ponies particularly when they were sacrificed to make something unique and special.  I'm also not telling those that don't like it to stop disliking it.  Feel the way you feel. 

In my opinion, there's no reason why some of us can't chop up all we want, so long as some of us keep them as they are.  Eventually they'll all be gone no matter what we do, or so rare that only the richest collectors will have any....a day when the poorest quality Peaches will be more expensive (in the day's currency) than Repunzel is now.  At some point there won't be any collectors either, even though of course the last person alive will have the last pony right?  haha.  But that's not today, and I love my flawed ponies as much as the perfect ones:  actually more because the perfect ones I don't want to play with, I put them away carefully in cardboard boxes (not in plastic) and the flawed ones I clutch freely, stuff in my pocket and take with me, sit on the table at a party or my desk at work, carry around a store shopping together, whatever.

Well now I'm way off topic so I'll stop.   

Edited to add, in response to the post just before mine which came in while I was typing:  very good points especially about the eBay issues. 

Also might as well add a joke, cuz I was waay too serious this whole post:  As for conservation, the US Constitution is getting a bit baity with all those frayed fibers and dark spots, so let's just paint it over with Trump's first executive order and call it a "custom".  It'll certainly be unique!

[Artemesia's Garden]

While I'm by no means an expert in plastics, I do have a background in museum sciences and the golden rule for conservation is "Do as little as possible." balanced against the collection serving its purpose of course.

^this

[Haruna]

I will probably re-boil my afflicted Bright Eyes and continue to love her, and continue to love my afflicted Gingerbreads especially the first one because she was donated to me for cancer study by a very generous arena member and I'm only holding off on her treatment because I want to understand why Gingerbread darkens in the sun rather than whitens so I can be sure I can have the best chances of returning her to "service" of being enjoyed on display and handled, not sacrifice her. 

I wonder if Gingerbread's propensity for cancer/age spots is related to how quickly she turns brown in the sun; it probably is, isn't it. Are there any other ponies so well-known for both cancer and turning brown in the sun? Cherry Treats and Starshine don't usually react well to UV rays (depending on what batch your Starshine came from) and will turn brown in the sun, but neither are as notorious for cancer as Gingerbread. Still, I imagine they get cancer.

(Early morning ramblings, sorry if that didn't make a lot of sense)

[lostpony]

Excellent question, Haruna!  Difficult to know the answer....we need more information.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Thank you all! I hope my baity Seashell will be okay! Might make a custom out of her, because i already have a good Seashell!

Seashell is not one of the most common ponies - I hope you consider selling her to someone who doesn't have a Seashell before customization... 

[lostpony]

When Seashell was in one of my first groups of eBay ponies (the seller turned out to be an arena member) I thought she was common too, but I haven't seen her since so she's not so common, but she does often have some issues so I hope if your extra one is in good shape that you decide to share her and find a worse one to customize.  Maybe you can make a trade for a worse one and something else too?

It's also possible to use plaster to make a mold of ponies and pour as many blanks as you want.  That home-process is also a bit pricey compared to a bait but once the mold is made, many can be produced...the quality wouldn't be as good as Genie for example, but the cost would be lower.  I wonder if someone prepared a home-based blank-making project in some less-common, more-desirable poses, if customizers would be satisfied with the level of quality produced to buy those blanks instead of sacrificing perfectly good Seashells.

There could also be advantages....blanks could be made of materials more suited for customizing, accept paint easier etc.  How much would a customizer pay for such a blank and what sort of parameters would make it desirable enough to pay more than a bait for?