On cleaning vintage toys - a case for less is more

I clean all the vintage toys that come into my collection (and also the ones I'm going to sell on).  But I don't like the trend I see among many collectors to jump to more intense cleaning methods first, without trying some more gentle methods first.

Spa day

Particularly, many collectors have jumped onto the Oxyclean or peroxide cleaning treatments.  I am extremely hesitant to use either of these for cleaning vintage toys, despite some positive reviews.  The main reason for my hesitancy is due to Remove Zit.  This is a stain remover product, much used in the doll community to great success.  Several people in the MLP community tried it on ponies and it was found to remove stubborn stains.  Unfortunately, it was also found to remove the colour from the ponies' bodies, bleaching them white.  This damage did not become evident until quite a long time after the product was used (sometimes years later), and the damage was permanent and often far more noticeable than the original stains.  Although the Remove Zit website says that it can be used on vinyl toys, it is not safe for use on MLP due to the dying process the ponies originally went through. The residual chemicals in Remove Zit can also transfer from one pony to another.

Oxyclean and peroxide baths are not made of the same stuff as Remove Zit, but they still require caution.  For MLP in particular, we already know that Oxyclean will damage certain pony features (so-soft, tinsel, princess pony symbols, and twinkle eyes, to name a few), yet people continue to use it without first doing their research.

As far as peroxide baths, they may brighten up the colours on a vintage toy, but to my mind the process is too new to know what the long term effects will be to these toys.  I suspect that in years to come we will find that (at best) the colours have yellowed or faded again or (at worst) the toys have been damaged and will degrade much faster than those not treated.
I'm always hesitant to use these type of chemical-intensive treatments on vintage toys.  We are already dealing with vinyl that is becoming chemically unstable, and adding more chemicals to the mix may not be the safest way to go.

For myself, I stick to simple methods.  Dish soap, conditioner for the hair (well rinsed afterward), and magic eraser.  These are tried and true, and, if used with care and attention, will not damage the toy further.

I've also found, in my 22 years of collecting, that patience is a virtue.  I've had several G1s in my collection with "permanent" marks on them (pen, and in one case, a Sugarberry whom I'm sure made a trip to the strawberry patch at some point), who's marks have now faded so as to be completely unnoticeable. This without any special treatment; no sunfading, no chemical treatments, just being kept in the most beneficial conditions possible for years, after a gentle cleaning.

For more information on safely cleaning ponies, I recommend checking out the MLP Preservation Project website.

Elf