#head glue

[imreadydollparts]

I had intended to do this after a decade but am moving soon and have to downsize, so I have to let go of quite a lot (so much......) and that includes these old doll heads that I'd treated for head glue with L.A.'s Totally Awesome back in 2017.

The Super Long Totally Awesome Follow Up Post.

Immediate results aren’t always the best indicator of success, so I’ve still been at it with the LA’s Totally Awesome. I’ve spent about $5 o

The short version is that these heads are fine. I'm not seeing any negative effects from the T.A. soaks after 9 years.

These have been in a zipper bag this whole time, too.

Anyway, there isn't any visible damage or change to their hair, vinyl heads, or makeup outside of what had already happened immediately after the treatment. Namely, on some dolls the lips changed color and glitter makeup was affected. I've also heard T.A. discolors the matte teal hair Monster High Twyla has.

Other than that, these dolls are perfectly fine. The scalps are hard where there is left over glue still stuck in the roots of the hair but the rest of the heads are soft still. No changes to makeup, no changes to hair, a couple of the dolls have a little stickiness at their parts in their hair, and Abbey has a couple mm of sticky going again.

So, for the most part, the glue is now solidified and stable, other than a couple places.

The visible yellowing on some of the heads is from the glue itself and occurred before treatment.

I'm very happy to have been a key part of this experimental journey to solve the nasty head glue problem and that my experiments emboldened others to try more products and find other solutions.

I do still feel like T.A. is the most complete and effective method, but it sure is a pain in the butt to do.

[firespirited]

hey!! I have a question about removing glue with cif cream, is it normal that the glue just turns white and "dries up" after soaking? Or should it be completely dissolved? The smell of cif lingers from the inside of the head, and general the whole head has cif smell after a few months:( is it normal?

Hi, the phenoxyethenol in cif and other power cleaners doesn't dissolve the glue, it transforms it from sticky waxy yellow to a harder white substance that can be scraped + tapped out of the head or left there (because it doesn't leech out anymore).

It's more of a glue neutraliser/stabilisation process than glue removal per se.

Which is why more glue is removed if the doll has more fluid glue that then turns into tiny white flakes.

Before I found the less scented Cif product contained the phenoxyethenol, I was using a floor cleaner with a really strong orange blossom smell and left the dolls outside for a week so the smell would wear off.

If you are in the EU or Canada there are websites that disclose the ingredients on household cleaners, if you find one that's unscented and has "non ionic surfectants" marked on the front in small print, you can see if the product contains a variant of ethoxylated alcohol which seems to be the key chemical in Totally Awesome cleaner (US only - See Tiffy's experiments at @imreadydollparts)

👍💜

[littlefluffbutt]

Poor Briar! Not only did she have glue head but was the victim of a marker manicure which of course led to major staining on both sides of her hands:(

Her head got a LA Totally Awesome soak and her hands spent several days covered in Zapzyt zit cream in a sunny window.

She looks 100% better! Even the stains, which were so bad I thought some would remain, are all gone, huzzah!!

[dolldirt]

Before and after. Soaking a glue head MH Frankie in 3% hydrogen peroxide in bright sunlight for 4 days. The yellowing is pretty much gone from the glue seepage now! The tinsel and hair texture are unchanged from what I can tell. But because this was a bait head I’m not sure if I’d dunk a favourite head just yet. The glue is still inside her head though, so it will probably turn yellow again as it seeps more. I highly doubt that the peroxide could neutralize it.

I wish that I would have tried this before I stole most of her hair for another reroot…

[andersonsdollpurpose]

Googling "metallic yarn": this brand has five colors named Astro. Might be an option once Elle Eedee's head starts leaking glue.

[andersonsallpurpose]

Combing through doll hair while watching Eddie Izzard’s Glorious. It’s really weird finally seeing the whole thing after the edited version has been embedded in my mind for almost 20 years. (20 years! Wow, I’m old.) And tv works considerably less well as background noise for crafty activities with the sound off, but it can be done. You just have to keep your hands in the vincinicy of the subtitles.

There’s a bunch of thrifted dolls I’m trying to sort out, but with stretched fibres there’s really not much you can do. Or does carefully ironing them help, like I think I’ve seen mentioned somewhere?

I also tried slathering the glue-soaked hair I cut off the thrifted Rochelle in vaseline and left overnight. I’m going to try washing it out in very hot water and see if there’s any improvement.

[imreadydollparts]

More Mattel Head Glue Mess.

So this was posted on X:

And it caused a lot of collectors/enthusiasts to be kind of mean to OP for trusting a tutorial by a well-known doll rehabber (keep in mind, well known doesn't mean they know what they're doing...) and trying that person's glue head removal method of saturating the hair in WD-40 then washing it, causing the hair to all fall out.

They were also saying she should have used L.A.'s Totally Awesome, because we all know that works well and is generally safe. Generally.

At first I was sure that the problem wasn't the oil because oil does degrade plastics, yes, but not THAT fast. I figured the glue being removed made the hair fall out in that removing the glue removes the hairs' anchor inside the head.

I thought this doll had Saran and tried WD-40 on a Barbie because I can't assume I know exactly what happened without having tried this method, but Barbie's hair was fine. WD-40 is very fast at removing the head glue (but difficult to wash out again, just like Goo Gone in our hard water), but still not recommended due to the way oils degrade plastics.

Then @oak23 told me this doll does NOT have Saran hair, she has a special hair fiber meant to hold a shape without heat.

That changes things!

So I ordered one of the same doll on eBay to test on and she got here yesterday.

Her hair is already breaking around the scalp and the hair texture looked weird, there.

That got me thinking the head glue is what's destroying the hair fiber, not the removal method, in this case, oil. That supports my earlier theory that applying oil didn't instantly destroy the hair.

I gave her a quick wash because she was dirty, chopped off some of her hair right up by the scalp so there was gluey and not-gluey hair, and soaked samples in T.A. and WD-40 for two hours.

I can't record while I'm working but after that 2 hour period I pulled the samples out, held it in both hands, and yanked on them hard.

I also yanked on the hair still attached to the head, which did not break any more than it had when I had combed it.

The WD-40 hair, when yanked, did not break. When I pulled specifically at the ends that had glue, though, just that area disintegrated!

The Totally Awesome soaked hair had the same results when yanked.

However, the hair broke apart even more at the glue end than the sample treated with WD-40!

This tells me that the head glue is what caused the hair to destabilize either by changing it's composition in some way or by integrating with the hair, and regardless of the glue removal method, once the glue was dissolved, the affected hair fell apart.

Link back to the post full of links to the other post about this issue:

Mattel Head Glue

With G3 Monster High hitting shelves, people are looking at G1 again and looking for ways to rectify the disgusting, seeping, doll destroyin

[imreadydollparts]

You all know how much I hate Mattel’s head glue.

I saw an Insta post talking about Aleppo soap working well, @dollsahoy said Aleppo soap is olive oil and lye, I have a bin of glue heads just for experimenting with, and tried straight olive oil followed by dish soap.

This Barbies hair wasn’t super gluey but it was clumpy.

Now it’s not.

Olive oil did dissolve the glue.

However, it doesn’t treat the glue inside her head AND the soapy wash afterward didn’t get all of the oil out even after 3 washes. I do have hard water.

Her hair feels a little oily, now.