Recently I acquired a talking eternal sailor moon for very cheap in a lot. I was very excited to score this doll, even as a hot mess, because her boxed mint version is usually around $300. So I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try out my first doll restoration and then customize her. My dream for this doll is to get her fully functional, beautiful, and customize her outfit and accessories to be more manga-accurate.
Currently her list of problems:
1. Stains/ink marks on body (scrub clean)
2. Hair is a matted tangled mess (detangle and soften)
3. Redo her entire outfit, also missing her accessories
4. She talks well! But...battery compartment has some contacting issues with the batteries
I decided to work on smoothing her hair first, then I will later clean the body and fix her hair style.
I read about different hair restoration methods and decided to go straight to the "Downy Dunk." I mixed 50:50 warm water and fabric softener for this method. First, I removed her hair bands and put clear packing tape over her electronic parts. I also did a talking Sailor Venus doll at the same time, whose hair was feeling icky with residue and her hair band actually
disintegrated into her hair. I put the lengths of the hair into the downy mixture first and got the lengths saturated. Then, very carefully, rotated and dunked the head down to just BARELY touching the scalp to wet more of the hair, and then left each doll with just the lengths soaking. I repeating the scalp dunk ever hour or two for the rest of the evening.
I removed venus after about 5 or 6 hrs and rinsed her hair, being careful to wrap her body in a towel. Her hair was nice and soft and did not need much detangling. An old Bio Ionic ceramic bristle round brush worked wonderfully to smooth her hair. The Downy dunk fixed all her hair problems: hair soft, shiny, and clean. I will redo her pony tail and deal with her bangs later!
As for Eternal Sailor Moon, I left her in overnight because her hair was in much worse condition. The next morning I rinsed, and started with a stiff plastic wide toothed comb to pick out the worst of the tangles, starting from the ends and working up. I also worked on about 1/4 of her hair at a time. Once the tangles were mostly removed, I used the round brush again to smooth it the rest of the way. As you can see, her hair looks immensely improved!
Before:
After:
That's it for Part 1, Part 2 to come shortly!
