Perils with soft rubber costumes (esp. Hot Toys figures)

This has been a problem since the GI Joe Rubber wet suits in the 60's.. Rubber does not hold up well. Rubber in contact with hard plastic will eventually melt the hard plastic items.. I choose not to spend my bucks on 1/6 items that are rubber.. And so for I have been happy..

I have even seen this problem with people storing more recent brands like Dragon, BBI, Hot Toys rubber boots and plastic bits together.

I've been throwing out warnings about this stuff every time one of these threads come up. Hot Toys make good figures I don't think if they are scientists/chemists who have come up with a cure for this.

This has become a greater issue in the last few years, since Hot Toys has started getting into Fan Boy subjects that lean towards Dudes in rubber suits. If you choose to take the risk that is a personal choice, but there is plenty of 1/6 to collect including Hot Toys that you can collect and avoid this issue.

This probem has been discussed in other fields of modelmaking and collecting that I have been involved in, in particular with reference to the vinyl and rubber tyres on model vehicles diecast and plastic. There seems to be two main problems. Firstly there is the problem of drying out and cracking of these types of material, this is caused by a component of the plastic called a plasticiser leaching out of the plastic over time. This process affects all plastics to some degree or another and is affected and accelerated by an objects exposure to heat and daylight, especially the ultraviolet part of daylight.

The second problem is the interaction between different types of plastics when they are kept in contact with each other. This is most noticeable between polyvinyl type flexible plastics and polystyrene type hard plastics. There actually seems to be a reaction between the plasticiser in the vinyl and the hard plastic. I have seen the tyres of a model car stuck to a CD case it was left standing on, and similiar tyres melted to a goo because of the plastic wheel they were on. I have also seen electrical cable with vinyl insulation that was wrapped around a hard plastic case 'burn' grooves into the case because of this chemical interaction.

So what can you do? Firstly it would in the long run perhaps be best to store plastic items in the dark and air tight containers as much as possible. And if at all possible to seperate flexible vinyl and rubbery plastics from hard plastics like polystyrene and ABS. It is possible to add plasticiser to some plastics, there are products made for restoring the plastic used on cars ( often very exposed to UV daylight ), like Armoral plastic polish and tyre cleaners. This course of action would need some experimentation with models and of course all the effects good and bad would take years to be seen.

Unfortunately as histrionics has said we are living in a plastic world, and no modern plastic has yet to be shown to have a limitless life. Lets face it plastic is mostly used for throw away items, it only gets used for mass produced models because it is convenient and relatively cheap. If you wanted everlasting figures you would have to get them cast in bronze and glass enamelled to colour them, imagine how much that would cost !!??