Yellowed Toys: Worse than the Black Plague
If you collect vintage toys you’ve no doubt run into the issue of yellowed toys due to the plastic used in them changing over time. It’s a scourge that hits many lines from Star Wars to Transformers and there’s never been a sure fire way to get rid of it.
It looks like the riddle has finally been solved. Astute reader PJ has sent me a a forum link that shows the solution, it’s a 30% Hydrogen peroxide solution. It’s really quite amazing. The only downside is the pictures are so large that they may just crash your computer if it is as pathetic as it is mine, so here’s a sample of the fellow who investigated if this stuff would work:
Before:
After:
This is seriously like watching Jebus step out of the tomb for toy collectors. Okay, it’s not like that at all, but it’s still damned amazing. If this really does work, I can imagine that all those yellow Storm Shadows and Stormtroopers at toy shows and on eBay look a lot more tempting than they ever have before.
The only warning here is that this stuff isn’t good to get on your skin and nobody knows if there’s any kind of long term damaging effects to the toys, but even a temporary cure is better than a lifetime of yellow hell right?
December 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Sounds like I’m buying a bunch of vintage Stormtroopers off of eBay for resale.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
It’s like magic.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
A nice coat of white paint will clean it up too! Just dunk it in the can!
December 4th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
This must be what Michael Jackson did.
Sorry; someone had to say it.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Thanks for posting this information. Toy restoration is a worthwhile endeavor. Not only just bringing your own collections back to life but also financially (you could make some good money restoring yellowed toys). I have a jetfire and a millennium falcon i’d like to try this on.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I’m still somewhat suspicious.
“The Transformers fandom has struggled with this issue for ages, and despite having the answer for some time, fans still often tinker with various concoctions hoping to reverse this scourge. Simply put, if a liberal amount of denture cream/household cleanser/virgin blood gets the toy white again, it wasn’t photodegradation, it was your common everyday grime that you removed. Some people have experimented with physically removing layers of plastic from toys (via fine-grit sandpaper) to remove photodegradation, but this seems like a temporary fix at best (and one that actually may damage the toy more). Unfortunately, the odds of reversing the photodegradation process are about as likely as turning a hamburger back into a pile of raw meat.”
December 5th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
“the odds of reversing the photodegradation process are about as likely as turning a hamburger back into a pile of raw meat”… based on what? That’s just an opinion from a wiki article. Through oxidation, the hydrogen peroxide alters the optical properties of the polymers that were initially mutated by the photodegradation. It’s not just cosmetic, the molecules themselves are changed.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:01 am
We’ve improved on this a LOT, check this Wiki out:
http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/
I am going to be writing the science behind this up and adding it to the Wiki this weekend.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Has anyone used this methond on soft plastic? I’d like to restore a My little Pony toy I have, but I’m worried this method could eat-up the plastic!
Thanks for you help!!