Anybody have any luck cleaning off the sticky residue from older, rubbery parts? I have a set of Tintin dolls I found that had been stored for 10 years, they are probably about 25 years old. Anyways, the arms and legs are rubbery vinyl over wire bendy frames. Shoes are little slip on rubbery things too. All of them are slightly sticky.

Anybody have any cleaning suggestions? I tried a rag with goo gone, that helped a little but once they dried they are near the same as when I started.

I think I may have to accept the cheap rubber is breaking down, and maybe just add a little baby powder to keep it at bay.

Are you mainly concerned with cleaning them Jeff, or trying to keep the rubber soft?

As a point of note, I would advise always being careful with goo gone. It can work great to remove residues and stuff, but on anything remotely porous, you can easily stain surfaces with it in my experience. I would only apply it on vinyl toys with testing in an inconspicuous area first if I could, and probably wouldn't use it on soft rubber unless really necessary.

It is hard to say how to remove the stickiness as it could be caused by a few things. But odds are, if you have given them a good scrub already and it is still there, it is something permanent from the aging you might not be able to fix. With vinyl toys that have become tacky I generally have been able to do some improvement with dishsoap, but certainly some of them still have a degree of tackiness remaining. You can try soaking them for a while too.

Unfortunately there is nothing really out there right now that can restore native plasticity to these things.

EDIT: A final thought, just thinking about these guys, as the way you described them they might be those old fashioned 'bendy' figures - might be best not to soak them, or use a hairdryer afterwards if you do. You always want to get as much moisture out from the metal as you can in these situations, and unfortunately the wires inside tend to be cheap and rarely hold up even under the best conditions. So maybe no filming of Tintin and the Electric Boogaloo.v

thanks for that, yeah I think I'm stuck with the tackiness to the bendy rubber parts. Sucks. I was able to reduce it by about 60% though, but it's still tacky.