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This is how I clean up ponies who need a bit of TLC. I'm in the UK so the products mentioned will be UK based. This is not a definitive guide on caring for ponies and I cannot be held responsible for any damage to ponies when you are following my advice. Always test products before you use them, this is just a guide to how I treat my ponies. The following does not apply to G1 So-Soft ponies, you need to be super gentle with them!

Body

For an initial clean up I use Vanish Oxi-Action Stain Remover foam which comes in a spray bottle and is meant for getting stains out of carpets and upholstery. You'd be amazed and how the grime just comes off!

Next I use Nail Varnish Remover to try and tackle more stubborn marks, being extremely careful not to touch the cutie mark, do this and you'll find you've wiped away her symbol or at least made a very nasty smear. This often removes biro marks from the shinier G3 ponies, only the white ponies seem a little more stubborn.

The remaining marks at this point are usually pen marks from highlighters and felt tips. New pen marks sometimes come off with the above two actions, but once the ink bleeds into the plastic... I had tried EVERYTHING and had no luck! I have been told to try OXY spot products but I can't find any OXY brand products locally and they have a special bleaching agent in them. The other spot remedies I've found do NOT have the vital form of peroxide needed and I've spend a fortune on useless products. I have tried household bleach, teeth whitener, every cleaner under my kitchen sink and nada! So I'm afraid pen marks are still the evil in my pony life. Luckily I only have one pony affected by this, my Desert Rose (well, Melody's) who was bought on eBay and came sporting some tremendous orange marks.

The only product I know which is generally successful on pen marks is Remove-Zit which can be bought online at http://www.twinpines.com/ for around $16 including shipping if you're in the US or at http://www.kittyscavern.com/ in the UK for around £7 including shipping in the UK. This product is used in doll restoration to remove green marks from plastic dolls. With older ponies, G1s I have had a lot of success. I have been able to remove 90% of pen and ink marks using the product and have not yet suffered any damage in using it. I know there are occasions where the pony is bleached where the Remove-Zit has been but I'm lucky enough to have only had positive results from it on G1s, in my view, it's been a little miracle in a pot and has enabled me to restore ponies I ordinarily would have put straight in the bait bin.

However, with G3s I can't say I've had the same success. In white G3 ponies, such as Desert Rose, instead of removing the colour it actually causes the colour to bleed into the surrounding plastic make the overall effect in fact worse. That's my word of caution, when it says test it out first, really do, just do one little mark if there's a lot and see what happens. Remember to wipe it off every couple of days with a dry tissue and put more on if necessary, Remove-Zit will not wash off with water!

Other body problems like yellowing from the sun, yellow age spots and the little black speckles which is becoming known as Pony Cancer are things that I haven't found a solution for but they tend to be concentrated on G1 ponies or certainly ponies of an older age. I'm lucky in that my entire herd is free from these ailments. Apparently boiling ponies with their heads removed helps to stop the progression of these problems and I've heard of people bleaching entire ponies to get rid of yellowing, however bleaching can lead to a patchy result! I think we need to learn to love these sick ponies regardless!

Hair

Ok, so G1s can be incredibly frizzy, most of mine were and even G3s seem to have a bit of a hair problem. I always start with the basics. Wash with regular shampoo and conditioner. You'll find a large amount of tail-rust can be removed by this. Don't submerge the pony in the water, she'll fill up and you'll get mould growing inside - yuck! With newer ponies this should be enough to tame the "Out of the Box" look but when there's frizz concerned more drastic action is needed.

I use intensive conditioner on ponies with frizz problems, and I leave it on overnight. 3 Minute Miracle is my favoured brand, I've tried Frizz Ease and Charles Worthington and I wasn't impressed but there is likely to be a conditioner that's even better. Once it's been on overnight I rinse it out and recoat the hair so I can begin to comb it out. It helps to be patient and divide the hair into sections at this point but I'm very impatient and often try to yank the comb through the whole lot, probably damaging it more.

Once you can get the comb through it I bring out the curling tongs. Whilst pony hair is plastic and will melt under very high temperatures I've found they need to be pretty hot in order to do anything at all to the hair. First make sure there's plenty of conditioner on the hair, then use the tongs to straighten section by section. You'll find that the tongs sizzle a little and actually cool down a little so you need to take your time. Keep checking the hair to make sure there's no damage being done. I've never managed to melt the hair but that could be because my tongs aren't able to get that hot.

Once you've repeated this a few times, making sure the conditioner is reapplied between coats the hair should be more manageable. Give it a good shampoo and conditioner then rinse her off and get ready to dry her off. I have to confess, I've never been able to save really, really frizzy hair, just make it displayable, as soon as you brush it, it expands again!

Simple Dry n' Style Drying your pony's hair is simple, it will dry in the air naturally but you want your pony to look good. Use strips of kitchen roll to wrap your pony's mane around her neck (and front leg if long enough) and her tail around her back leg and leave the pony wrapped up overnight. When you remove the strips of kitchen roll the next day you'll find beautifully glossy hair which looks great. The little baby you see to the right was in a shocking state when I found her, with messy hair and even a hair cut but after a wash and wrap she looked lovely. Sadly extreme haircuts don't wash away, but there's always re-rooting!

Taming Frizz This is a great example of a frizzy to display pony, though she still has rather a mad look to her! Little Honey Pie came to me from ebay and the before photo doesn't really do justice to how bad she was. I washed, conditioned, straightened (with irons) and dried her mane and tail into a curl as she would have originally had. For this curl wrap the ends in kitchen roll to keep them together and slip this into the clasp at the top of the pen, (no clasp, use an elastic band) Then twist the pen until it's tight against the pony and put a hair bobble around it to tie the whole wrapped pen to the pony's legs or neck. Leave overnight then slip out the pen and paper!

Ringlets For real lovely curls I use bendy drinking straws and elastic bands! This doesn't work too well with tinsel (I'm going to be de-tinselling soon so I'll let you know how that goes) but it's great with normal pony hair. Take small sections of hair after washing, around 4-5 each for the mane and tail, wrap a small length of kitchen roll around the ends to keep them together and then roll them around the straw starting at the bend along the long side. Then bend the straw over and secure with an elastic band and secure the other end to the ponies leg or neck, whatever's easiest. Then repeat with the other sections, tying each new straw to the others in it's group, until your pony looks hilarious. Leave overnight and remove in the morning. Wow! It's SO curly!

Pony Paintwork and Nibbles

Now, what to do about damaged symbols, blush and eyes. I favour leaving the blush as it's very difficult to make it look natural but with G1s I have used acrylic paints to touch up minor damage to symbols and eyes. I mean minor, the bigger the damage the harder to make your touch up work look inconspicuous.

As for nibbles and missing bits this is extremely difficult. It is theoretically possible to use things like Fimo (polymer clay) and Modelling Cement to fill in missing bits or smooth over nibbles but matching the colour is very difficult and most G3 ponies now have a slightly sparkly colour which is virtually impossible to match. If you're customising and wish to patch her up before painting then it's certainly worth a go but if you're a perfectionist like me, it'll still bug you!

For all over paint jobs I use acrylic paint and a small flat brush, not a rounded one. I find I can paint right up to the ponies eyes and even between the lashes with a flat brush so I only need to change the colour in eye not repaint the whole thing. Use a base coat if you can get one, it'll help the paint stick better to the pony though so far I've not had too much trouble with acrylics. Thin coats and at least 3 is advised, don't be tempted to start the next coat straight after finishing one as it could look patchy.

Moonfire is the first pony I painted in this method, I used a metallic acrylic paint that cost just £1.89 from The Paper Mill Shop, it's Anita's brand and it's lovely, though my husband calls Moonfire 'Toenail' as he says I picked a nail varnish colour! Thanks! She turned out lovely and the paint looked great. Sandstone was spray painted and I don't recommend it. Too many drips, too much drying time and the paint will flake away after a while. It was more trouble than it was worth and it was incredibly expensive. Definitely a 'been there, done that, don't need to go there again!'

Re-Rooting Hair

Oh goodness, now that's a big step. First you'll have to remove your ponies head. G1s seem to be easier than G3s but basically you need to try to soften the glue with hot water then gently tease and use a scalpel or craft knife to separate the two pieces. Once you cleared round the neck you'll need to pull quite hard to get the head off.

Once they're apart take a look inside. If the pony is mouldy then you'll need to clean her out. It doesn't happen too often with G3s admittedly but it's still something to check for. Then pull the tail out through the neck using tweezers. That's the easy bit. Adding a new tail requires selecting double lengths plus an inch of the chosen colours and binding them in the middle and threading them through the washer. I've used craft wire before and it's been great. I then use a piece of cotton wrapped around the hair to pull it through the tail hole next and it seems to work quite easily.

The mane though is a great big jumble of hair in a small space. You need to painstakingly remove each and every plug, if you don't want to save the hair just go for it with the tweezers, if you do you need to try to get each plug. It's time consuming and you'll be left with a bald pony. At this point you may think, 'oh what have I done' but don't despair.

The new pony mane will look great, really and you will probably try the technique that I did, which was threading a thin bundle of hairs through a needle, which takes forever and is very frustrating, then plunging it through the hole from outside the pony to inside, then trying to get the hair so the middle of the bundle was through the hole while unthreading your needle and you get the picture, it's hard and it's messy. I was covered in fake hair for days and I'd only done 6 plugs!

I bought a tool from eBay sold by a member of the forums, her MLP Arena name is LadyDayDreamer, and her eBay id is plat_drgn. She has designed a tool which makes it easy to root in those plugs. You simply place the tool in the middle of your double length hair bundle, punch it through the hole and remove the tool. When you've done the whole mane you can run glue along the neat rows of hair to secure them. I use all-purpose glue, which is fairly strong and I use a cotton bud to make sure it really coats the hair well. Leave it overnight then brush the mane.

You can now trim the mane and tail to your required length and you now have a re-rooted pony! With Moonfire I cheated, I only did one plug of red in her mane and I didn't glue it in, I know to be gentle when combing her but it stays in really strong. Sandstone was completely re-rooted using the tool and I think she looks great. The biggest problem I had was the quality of the hair. The best one I've seen is Katsilk but it's expensive, Sandstone has 'cheap hair accessories' hair so it's very straight and doesn't style well. I found that heat treatment with the tongs helps to soften it and curling cheap hair is quite easy.

Thanks for the idea Eternia, any suggestions please email me at moonfire@g3mlp.com