So, because of my impending downsizing house move, I have to get rid of almost all the toys I own. I'm sad about this of course, but it's the right thing to do - and it's giving me the opportunity to say a last farewell to them all while I clean them up ready for their new homes!
So I started the restoration by giving them all a full body check for dirty and marks, and then a light rinse.
I then shampooed their hair and removed any debris stuck in the tangled bits (this included a tiny green lobster, naturally). I did my best to detangle with a wide-toothed comb, but this wasn't very successful at this stage.
Here's everypony (heh) with their hair shampooed and ready for the next step!
This was the water after the first round of washing and shampooing!
After a basic clean and shampoo, I could start properly detangling their hair using conditioner! This lead to some slightly suspicious looking process photos...
Despite the 🥴 photos, conditioner made so much of a difference in detangling their hair! I wasn't quite successful with the knock-off ponies, but all the official MLPs detangled perfectly.
After detangling with three separate sizes of comb (wide-toothed, fine and then super fine), I rinsed them with warm water.
To stop their hair immediately tangling again, I sectioned it and plaited it to keep it tidy.
The water was pretty gross again after this step too! The ponies still need a full body clean, but I wanted to sort their hair first to keep it out of the way as best I could.
I then left them in our conservatory over night to dry and air out! They're smelling so clean looking better already.
For further cleaning, I used acetone to remove small flecks of paint from the ponies, along with OxiClean for gentle abrasion and removal of dirt. These two made a great combination!
I read that Benzoyl Peroxide could potentially remove pen stains from ponies...
...but managed to miss the part where they would need to be soaked in it in the sunlight for a couple of weeks! So these ponies will have to wait a little longer to be ready to go to new homes unfortunately.
These guys were almost finished at this point!
As a finishing touch for the majority of the ponies, I photographed them and then plaited their hair ready to be stored and/or transported. I also did final checks for any marks and realised I'd missed a fair few flecks of paint - so I went back in with long cotton buds and acetone again, carefully removing the last remaining flaws.
When trying this on the white ponies, I realised that acetone was actually removing a lot of dirt and restoring their original bright white colour!
This was very time consuming, so I'm actually not finished with this step yet.
Just look at the filth that came off not even two whole ponies! Yuck!
Continuing with the acetone this morning, I managed to get the white ponies looking much brighter!
Again, so much filth came off them, and it just kept coming! Very pleased with how much better they look though.
Today's task was attempting to sort the manes and tails of these "fakies" - using boiling water. This was successful to varying degrees, but I will persevere! I started with the fluffiest looking hair on this light yellow pony.
Hers didn't end up straightening out too well, but I think I made at least some progress with it.
I then moved onto this lavender pony - and it worked extremely well for her! Her mane is perfect now and she's ready to go to her new home I think.
I also started on these twin ponies who had incredibly tangled and messy hair. I ended up working the most on one pony, because I couldn't tell if it was working or not.
The lower pony is the one who had the most work done - I think her hair looks a little better than the other one's?
