How I fixed up a Baby Glory with a bad smooze problem:
Smooze or pin dot mold is the result of the pores in the plastic that lovely My Little Pony are made of opening up. Just like a human face, dirt and grime get in there along with mold spores and the lovely pony now has a speckling or freckling over parts of its body. Generally a good boiling with OxiCleanof about 5 minutes is in order to fix the problem. However there are several ponies that one shouldn’t boil because of the high potential for damage. Ponies with glitter symbols like my poor Baby Glory are an example. With glitter symbols being rather easy to rub off in the first place, high heat generally will remove them as well. I have boiled ponies with glitter symbols before, and the symbols stayed. I consider that more due to luck, so I would say just don’t boil them. In this case with her symbol in great condition I wasn’t going to place a bet on it either.
So instead I decided to try a good hot soak in OxiClean instead. First I removed her head from her body. Usually a good twisting and pulling and it will pop right off. The head was in much worse shape nearly covered in all spots with dreaded smooze. I decided a longer soak for the head would be necessary, so separating the main body would allow me to protect the symbol more by removing it from the bath earlier. (As a side note when you do boil ponies the head is generally removed to prevent the pony from contorting into horrible shapes.)
Filling up a 2qt. pot I use to boil ponies about halfway with water, I set it over the stove to begin heating up. Heat is the main key here as it opens up the plastic. If you don’t feel comfortable in using near boiling water then you can let the mixture cool more, or use hot tap water. The hotter the better, but you can still get results if you are patient and repeat the process a few times. Once the water came to a boil I turned off the burner and began adding one full scoop of OxiClean VERY SLOWLY. OxiClean will bubble up and expand faster than you can imagine. Even sometimes when you think you have things under control, and add a little more it will foam over like soda poured too fast into a glass. Once you have the full scoop of powder added, stir the mixture thoroughly to make sure that all the crystals dissolve. Again be careful because it will foam up again.
Now, it’s time for the pony. I just dropped Baby Glory right in. In this case since her symbol was glitter I only soaked the body for around 5 minutes. Time really depends on the water temperature. If you’re worried then check the pony. You can take tongs, the end of a butter knife, chopsticks, whatever to remove the pony. She will be HOT, so no hands. After 5 minutes the body was looking pretty good so I transferred it to the sink. Running some water I washed her off thoroughly with a toothbrush being very careful around the eye, blush and symbol areas. In fact don’t even touch the glitter symbols. Just run some water over them. Using anything with a bristle will often scratch or remove such aspects of the pony. After I felt the OxiClean residue was removed I set the body aside.
And I hadn’t forgotten about the head. I ended up soaking the head for about 25 minutes, stirring and checking on it often for discoloration and making sure the eyes and paint were still in good shape. (OxiClean is usually quite safe in this regard.) After the lengthy soak, the head was looking good too. So on once more to the sink and a good rinse.
Following the general shampoo, conditioning, styling, & drying, and behold a beautiful Baby Glory!