pony cancer or something else entirely?

[preciousstar]

i recently picked up a big brother Quarterback and a TE Galaxy at a garage sale, and they were pretty dirty. cleaning them up, i was dismayed to find some spots under all of the dirt

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


visitors can't see pics , please register or login


visitors can't see pics , please register or login


visitors can't see pics , please register or login


they also have a slightly off smell to them. could it possibly be some kind of staining caused by smoking?

i'm kind of disappointed, but considering how little i paid for them, it could be worse. is there anything i can do? and i'm pretty sure this won't spread to other ponies, right?

[lostpony]

Except for the suspicious round spots under the football and under the twinkle eye, those are not cancer.  Hold the  round spots up to a strong light source to see if they are bigger underneath the skin than they appear in regular lighting, and if they are not bigger under back-light then they probably aren't cancer (referring specifically to "centerpoint cancer") and just happen to be round.

To be sure the spots can't spread (which unlikely anyway but it doesn't hurt to be affirmative), make sure to take the heads off and clean them inside and out thoroughly....because there is a little bit of coating on the Twinkle Eye gems, don't use Oxi-clean on the outside of the head but you might want to scrub her with cleanser (except the eye, just leave the eye alone) and soak the body in Oxy and wash out the inside of her head with oxy.  Quarterback you can immerse in oxy as well, soak overnight or so maybe.  Make sure both are thoroughly dry before putting heads back on.

Then you might be able to sunfade those marks away; but I don't know these particular ponies for sunfading so if you want to be sure someone else will have to weigh in on it.

[Baby Sugarberry]

The neon hair colours do NOT like being put in Oxyclean, don't do it. 

A good scrubbing with soap and water is likely to do just as good a job, and won't end up ruining them in the process.  You cannot exterminate mould/mildew; it's impossible outside of a biological 'clean room'.  There's little point in trying.  Far better is to prevent the conditions that allow them to grow - avoiding high humidity / temperature. 

Galaxy's look like really old and faded contact stains.  They may sunfade out.  QB's are his typical brown age spots, pretty hard to find one of him without them.

[Haruna]

:/ I once got a Sundance who had marks that looked like the marks on Galaxy and the marks on Quarterback's left shoulder:

(Rosedust is in the picture because she also had some sort of mold issue)
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


I'm pretty sure Sundance was suffering from some kind of mold that was probably permanent in the plastic, and I fear that's the case for Galaxy and Quarterback, too, especially because they smell funny. But I'm not an expert (Note: I think other than his left shoulder, Quarterback's marks are the age spots/cancer that he's prone to get, as Baby Sugarberry noted, and there's no cure for age spots that I know of.)

As far as the possible mold, I think you could try sunfading the stains away after a good cleaning (let the pony dry completely first), but I've heard pink ponies don't always react well to the sun, and I'm not sure blue ponies do either, so it's a gamble. As far as the good cleaning, Lostpony suggested Oxyclean, which I haven't tried on a Galaxy, while Baby Sugarberry says it's not safe for her; you could instead use a highly diluted bleach solution (i.e., one tbsp bleach for every five tbsp of water) to kill any mold still living. Clean with this inside and outside the pony, scrubbing as well as you can with an aquarium brush and/or toothbrush, and wash the bleach solution off thoroughly afterwards with soap and water. I've used this safely for many years and the weakened bleach solution won't hurt the pony.

[orangepeachmango]

The neon hair colours do NOT like being put in Oxyclean, don't do it. 

A good scrubbing with soap and water is likely to do just as good a job, and won't end up ruining them in the process.  You cannot exterminate mould/mildew; it's impossible outside of a biological 'clean room'.  There's little point in trying.  Far better is to prevent the conditions that allow them to grow - avoiding high humidity / temperature. 

Galaxy's look like really old and faded contact stains.  They may sunfade out.  QB's are his typical brown age spots, pretty hard to find one of him without them.

(kind of off topic..) but let's say i DO have access to a clean room.. how would one go about cleaning out mold inside a pony in the clean room? would that guarentee mold could be taken out and it wouldnt come back?

[lostpony]

Well it seems the use of Oxi-Clean is less settled than I thought.

These days I personally use cleanser and a toothbrush almost exclusively and other methods only on already-damaged ponies.

I too have used bleach but was convinced to never use it anymore....however, I always get carried away with strength and duration with things, so...  Even if safe when used as Haruna describes (which sounds safe to me) don't soak in it or leave it on but follow only the proportions and instructions as Haruna describes.

I believe it is well settled that dry conditions after a good cleaning is the best way to prevent mold.  There is no way to get rid of mold, it's all around us and is in fact a third of our biocycle:  we think of the plants and the animals but the third leg is the saprophytes: things that live on dead things and return the energy and materials back to the plants.  This largely means mold, and it's a factor of our biosphere that can't be gotten rid of.  So, make your ponies unable to support new mold by keeping them dry.  Whether the spots on our ponies are mold or other breakdown, the best we can do is to keep them dry so the things that are mold don't form.

[Baby Sugarberry]

The neon hair colours do NOT like being put in Oxyclean, don't do it. 

A good scrubbing with soap and water is likely to do just as good a job, and won't end up ruining them in the process.  You cannot exterminate mould/mildew; it's impossible outside of a biological 'clean room'.  There's little point in trying.  Far better is to prevent the conditions that allow them to grow - avoiding high humidity / temperature. 

Galaxy's look like really old and faded contact stains.  They may sunfade out.  QB's are his typical brown age spots, pretty hard to find one of him without them.

(kind of off topic..) but let's say i DO have access to a clean room.. how would one go about cleaning out mold inside a pony in the clean room? would that guarentee mold could be taken out and it wouldnt come back?

I'm no microbiologist but I imagine the cleaning protocols for completely sterilizing something would be similar to medical equipment, which I do have some knowledge of - autoclaves.  Sterilization temperature is normally 120-130C.  Theoretically below vinyl's melting point but I'm in no way confident that wouldn't cause irreversible damage anyway.   Seriously don't go throwing your ponies into an autoclave.   

Sterilizing wouldn't magically make the stains disappear though.

[orangepeachmango]

(kind of off topic..) but let's say i DO have access to a clean room.. how would one go about cleaning out mold inside a pony in the clean room? would that guarentee mold could be taken out and it wouldnt come back?

I'm no microbiologist but I imagine the cleaning protocols for completely sterilizing something would be similar to medical equipment, which I do have some knowledge of - autoclaves.  Sterilization temperature is normally 120-130C.  Theoretically below vinyl's melting point but I'm in no way confident that wouldn't cause irreversible damage anyway.   Seriously don't go throwing your ponies into an autoclave.   

Sterilizing wouldn't magically make the stains disappear though.

maybe its worth taking a pony whos totally totally beyond repair into my clean room and running some experiments.. 

[lostpony]

insert frightened emoji here

[Nemesis]

It won't help the stains, but if you're concerned about sterilization, white vinegar and baking soda are a safe go-to. Between the two, they kill most types of mold. I have never personally seen any ill effects on the many dolls, ponies, and even plush I've used them on. I would give those ponies a nice soak, just to be extra-careful.

[preciousstar]

thank you everypony! it looks like i'm just down to the diluted bleach scrub and the vinegar/baking soda soak. i also have a sneaking suspicion that QB is going to have a fair amount of rust inside, so that will be fun. vinegar or baking soda couldn't do any damage to the twinkle eyes, could they?