OK, big huge warning! this is not the absolute positive way of doing a toy clean up but some of the results i have received are encouraging.

I posted another thread about myself receiving a 12" Luke and how i proceeded to clean him up.

To clean his shirt i had tried tried dishwashing soap but it was just not working out.
I read a few things on the internet and finally landed on oxi clean and its capabilities. I decided to give it a try to at least clean the yellowed shirt i had on my 12" Luke.

I prepared a batch and dipped the shirt in and let it rest there for 5 minutes. I went back and checked and over half of the bad yellow stains were already gone. Very encouraging. I let it soak some more and finally retrieved the shirt out when i saw that all the nasty stains were gone. I rinsed the shirt with water to remove the excess of chemical and lay the shirt flat to let it dry. It did dry and did stay minty white with no apparent ill effect to the fabric. Nice. A ugly shirt brought back to almost factory settings. Then i said what the heck, Might as well do the boots and so i did. The boots were covered in grime and somewhat yellowed. I laid the boot to soak for a while, then took them out and i was surprised at how much white i had brought back to the boots. Almost mint looking.

Ok nice, maybe i found a way to clean stuff up. Tonight i decided to try a few more things, I had some spare droid factory parts, so no big deal, i put them in the colution and let them in for a bit. Again these were a bit grimy so i let it soak for a while...took them out and let them dry. Oxi clean cleaned the grime but did not bleach the plastci as it did with the rubbery boots on my 12" luke. I had checked the color of the plastic on the parts i soaked and it " seems" that i gained maybe a shade of white. But i am not 100% sure because it is night here and i have the lights one which could falsify my view of the color.

Again i said what the heck. I also had a spare 8D8 that had turned somehwat brown from exposure and dirt. I decided to give him a bath. I let him soak for a bit but not too long.

I retrieved him to see if the chemical could remove anything or even bleach the toy. My findings were that for the time ti spent in the chemical, no browness was removed and the paint seem to remain intact. However the overall look of the figure looks better. It seems that the chemical went into every little crevisse of the toy and disolved the dust and grime that i coudl not reach before.

Ok it looks like it can bleach some stuff and clean some stuff better than dishwashing soap. "Maybe".

I am very reticent to share this because some people might actually damage their toys beyond repair but it seems to be a good solution to clean an all white piece of plastic part. I do not know the long term effect of this chemical bath on the plastic toy. But i am pretty sure i am gonna be long gone before the toy itself breaks down from sunrays and other chemical interactions. I recommend caution and maybe do some test before actually trying to clean up a very expensive piece of collectible. But since i got some good results like i said, i wanted to share this.

I 'cleaned' my Uzay MTV-7 with a similar oxidizing agent- bad, bad mistake. Sure it's white & cleaner but the black wheels look frosted. As you said any use of harsh chemicals to clean vintage toys should be done with extreme care & I do NOT recommend it.

i am probably sure that it opens the pores of the plastic and clean it up but it opens everything without distinction. so probably some of the stuff that was on the white ended up in the black because of the chemical reaction which gives the unfortunate result. I am inclined to say that stuff work great on white only items that are either porous or are made of fiber. Like my Luke shirt and Luke's boot. I guess there are no miracle chemicals that you can possibly buy to bring back your toys back to the 80's state =...sadly... and like James said he does not recommend it. But i just wanted to share the info in case someone had the same idea of doing this but did not really know about the possible results..

Hydrogen Peroxide +  vintage shuttle =

AJ, probably worth posting a link to SWFUK showing the whole nightmare of a story.

That's spooky looking. I bet the guy who tried that wasn't pleased after.

http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=19060&hilit=shuttle

I've used OXY-CLEAN (a coupe of hefty spoons in a large bowl of water for 36hrs) to clean some "test" vintage figures and 5 years later they are still good... didn't get rid of yellowing that much but cleaned away all grime and residue. It did get rid of some yellowing that I think was tobacco staining though. Greatly improved the over all look of the figures and they were "squeaky" clean afterwards. I think when it comes to ulta-violet caused yellowing though you are pretty much Sh*# out of luck... an unfortunate fact about plastics is that they are not permanently stable. You can do two things to help prevent yellowing though: do NOT keep them in plastic baggies (this definately accelerates degredation) and keep them off your window sill. That and keep them away from Alex's crack

bedheadjulian wrote:

I think when it comes to ulta-violet caused yellowing though you are pretty much Sh*# out of luck... an unfortunate fact about plastics is that they are not permanently stable. You can do two things to help prevent yellowing though: do NOT keep them in plastic baggies (this definately accelerates degredation) and keep them off your window sill. That and keep them away from Alex's crack

What about keeping loose figures in the protech display cylinders and mocs in star cases?

From what I know the rigid plastics aren't as bad for leaching chemicals as the soft plastics (IE: ziplock baggies).  That said, I keep all my loose figures in acid-free paper bags now. ... and I don't drink from plastic bottles lol

I have my figures in ziplocs right now but i ll move them to other kinds of bags later.

I think that acid free collectibles bags should be ok but i am not 100% sure.

I think that oxy clean works best on pourous material and fiber materials... that way the stuff gets into everything and breaks down what is not supposed to be there.

I have had good results on Vintage 12" luke's clothing Like i said earlier...so if the things are ruined by stains theni would give it a try..

i think oxy clean works best on white stuff... Me thinks a vintage 12" leia would get her dress sparkly white after an oxy clean or resolve clean up. I have yet to get one so i did not try it yet... but My luke looks almost factory fresh and thats a good thing!

Yeah I used "Vanish" which is the U.K equivalent on a 12" han shirt and a 12" Boba cape which were quite heavily stained, it brought them up lovely and clean