Treatment & Care
You finally got that PVC figure from the mail or the store & you can't wait to pull it out of the box & display it. After you display that gorgeous figure on the shelf, you leave it there & stare at its glory. A few weeks later, you see it collecting dust, lose colour, or warped out of shape. You start to panic & cry as you think to yourself, "why didn't I take care of it properly?!"
Does the above paragraph sound like you? Or did you wonder how to treat your collectables with care? Well, this page may help you out. This section contains some tips that may help you learn how to take care of your collection. These tips are based on my personal experience in caring for my collection. It's not the best tips in the world, but at least it's a start. It's a painful time consuming process, but you have to live with it if you plan to keep your collection in top shape.
Display cases
If you have a lot of gashapons & trading figures, you probably should get yourself some display cases for them. These figures are small & can fall apart when you try to clean them. If you have a huge collection of them, it can be a pain in the ass. By putting your figures in a display case, you don't have to worry about dust going in & all you need to clean is the case. Therefore, display cases are worth your investment.
The problem with display cases is that they are pricey. Also, some of them seem to take up more space on your shelf than needed. If you have a lot of display cases on your shelf, it may make your room look ugly as you see a lot of clear boxes all over the place. Nowadays, gashapons & trading figures are getting bigger in size. They are now around 10cm on average & growing. Display cases are around 11cm high; lower for the stage type ones. This can force you to buy the adjustable shelf ones & those are really expensive.
For statue-sized figures, display cases for those sizes are expensive. Also, finding the right size for it is difficult. Figures these days have their accessories or body parts extended out, which makes its width wide. Finding cases for those figures are usually hard since they need to be custom made.
Cleaning
One rule in cleaning your collection: Never use chemical-based cleaning solvents! It eats away the paint & material. The last thing you want to do is some touchup paint work or throw part of your collection in the trash. A wet watered cloth should be avoided if possible, especially on self-painted garage resin kits, model kits, & chromed figures. Based on personal experience, the paint started to fade out & strange black marks started to appear. However, damped cloths are okay as long as you don't make them too wet. Sometimes, I use this method. But, I clean my collection by dusting most of the time.
Dusting is probably the best way to clean your figures. Get yourself a feather duster & lightly dust away on your figures. For those hard to reach places, use a small hobby paintbrush to dust those areas. It doesn't have to be a good one; as long as it can do the job. If you have action figures or Gundam model kits, make sure you dust off the joints as well. It can be a problem in the future if you let dust collect in there as the joints will be hard to move.
I heard canned air are good cleaning tools. However, some of them contain chemicals that can "blow away" the paint from your figures. Imagine using a canned air to blow some dirty from your figure's eye & the next thing you know the coloured part of the eye is stretched out to the forehead. If you plan to use canned air, make sure to test it on something first before using it on your collection. I never used canned air before, so you are on your own if you take this approach.
If you have plush toys, the only way I can think of is lightly hitting the dusty area with your hand or dust away with a feather duster.
Placement
You might be asking why does placement matter in treating & caring for your collection. It matters a lot! You want your collection to avoid direct sunlight as much as possible, especially those PVC figures. Heavy sunlight causes your collection's paint to fade out. For PVC figures, they are more in risk. It causes them to warp & bend. Although I never had this problem before, I heard that it is serious. They bend in positions that are unthinkable. I find the warped positions hard to believe, but I'm not going to experiment it with my figures.
Lighting
There are times you want to place your collection in a glass display case that have some lighting in them. Although they will make your collection shine, you may want to be careful with this approach. Most of the lights in those display cases are small halogen light bulbs & they can produce a large amount of heat very quick. If you have an enclosed glass display case, that may be worse since the heat will be trapped in there with little cool air circulating in there. It's better to use natural lighting if possible. So, getting a glass display case on all sides is the best.
Temperature
Very important. Always put your collection in a place that is set at room temperature most of the time. By room temperature, I mean around 24°C. Some figures now are better built with better materials & can withstand more now. Since all of these figures come from Japan, you would assume they would be able to withstand high temperatures since it's hot there. That's not the case sometimes. Excessive heat will make your figures bend or warp & that's not what you want. If the material is poor quality, you may have a melting effect on them.
Fixing Bent Parts
This problem usually happens with gashapon figures more. The reason why is because they originally come in those capsules. With little room in them, the figures inside bend out of shape. To fix this, boil some very hot water & dip the bent part into it for a few seconds. Once you pull it out of the water, immediately bend the part back to shape. Be careful not to burn yourself since it just came out of hot water. I haven't tried this method, but I heard it works.
Another method to fix bent parts is to use a hair dryer. Turn the dryer at the maximum heat setting & place the part under it. When it's hot enough, bend the part back into shape & hold it for awhile. Be careful since it's hot. I tried this method with a bended PVC figurine & it works. However, it seems it works for a short period of time. But it could have been the weight of my PVC figurine causing it to bend back out of shape again.
Weight Problems
This usually occurs on PVC figures. There are some PVC figures that have figures standing on one feet or having most of their upper body leaning towards one side. Because of the weight from the upper body, it can cause the figure to bend towards the heavy side in what looks like an "about to fall" position. One reason behind this is how solid the material is. Sometimes, the body parts are hollow inside or solid. Most of the time, it's hollow & that explains the bending problems since there's hardly any weight support. I have yet seen any PVC material made figures that are solid inside. If they are, they would be very heavy.
Currently, I don't have solutions to resolve this problem. You can bend it back into shape with the methods mentioned in the previous section. However, this will only temporary fix it since the weight will cause it to bend the figure out of shape again. One possible method is to add something to the side of the figure with the most weight, like a stand of some sort. Although it may help prevent the figure from leaning from the weight problem, it will make your figure look a bit ugly having a thing sticking next to it.
My suggestion is to display the figure for a short period of time & display it in a cool temperature area. In between, put the figure back in the box when you stop displaying it. It can maintain its original pose longer. For some reason, they can bend back into shape when you put them back in their original boxes for a long period of time. That's only if the bending problems aren't serious. I have no explanation for this.
Last updated on February 19, 2008
