I was surprised to find my account was still valid here! I have been poking around for the last few months, and then I found this little section for Jumbos, etc. Thought I'd post this restoration project. I'll let the pics tell the story.

How it arrived:






















More in a bit.

Breaking down and cleaning up:





After a nice long rinse in the dish washer:

Mark!

Looking good. The old dishwasher trick seems to hold true. Now he just needs a fresh set of decals.

Cant wait to see the stickers on!

Sticker pics in a bit. It's actually been done for awhile, but a couple stickers were missing so I was hoping to snap a new pic before posting it anywhere else.

Hi Henry!

All purtied up. As I mentioned a few stickers for the red lion's face were missing, so he's only 99.99% complete. Hopefully those stickers show up soon.









Also found some new springs at OSH:

Excellent work on this restoration project. He came out beautifully. I probably would have just left it alone (stickerwise I mean), as my toys tend to be very 'loved' but man, he looks brand new now!

God, it looks like brand new.

Thanks for the pics. Where did you get the stickers printed and on what type of paper?

It went from rags to riches in a few posts, neat!

now that's a trick i've never considered. great idea!

from the looks of the last few photos, all your hard work has paid off in spades. congrats on a beautiful restoration!

Thanks guys. All my other Jumbos (Shogun Warriors) have their original stickers intact. This one was so dirty there was no way to clean it without wrecking the stickers anyway. Plus, I noticed later, that a number of the original stickers weren't applied correctly! Anyway, I got this guy for a good price, and knew of people over on the Robot Japan messageboard who make stickers, so I figured it would be a fun little project.

As far as cleaning him up goes, I did need to remove a lot of residue with WD-40 after it was run through the washer. Basically, I broke him down, soaked him in the sink in soapy water to loosen the stickers and get them off. If I were to do this again, I'd get the residue off at this point THEN run it through the dishwasher. The heat of the washer kinda made the residue that much harder to get off. And yes, I did check to make sure WD-40 was okay to use one polyethylene. It left no residue.

The stickers are a nice thick vinyl decal that I purchased from a member of the Robot Japan messageboard. They went on super easy, which was great since that's the part I feared I was going to screw up.

'Goo Gone' works great for sticker residue, and is safe on most non-porous plastics. I have used it for years now on all kind of things. I haven't used the dishwasher myself, but just caution avoiding any high temperatures, as some dishwashers/settings can really get up there and even melt and deform standard kitchen plastics.

Yup. I put it on the lowest setting, and didn't let it go through the drying cycle. Only thing that warped were the two screw holes on the lower part of the yellow leg. Didn't harm it in any way.

nice thread Lttr Prssd,
voltron looks great! congrats on your success

Thanks!

I was looking at this thread yesterday, and it's done?!?!?!?!?!? Amazing job, for some reason i thought that this was going to take months, or at least weeks, very impressive. Voltron and Mazinger were 2 of my favorite cartoons when i was a little kid, i could only imagine the fun i would've had if i had either one of those at that time .

Well, it's been done for awhile actually. I got the figure in early April, and the stickers earlier this month. He's been done for a couple weeks. I just didn't have time to post all the pics in one sitting.

To each his or her own, of course, but for some reason, in the case of Golion/Voltron III, for some reason, the stickers *really* had a peculiar tendency to peel. There are MISB examples of the LJN release that have been discovered with stickers peeling inside the box.

And Golion happens to be a very nicely decorated Jumbo! There are many older generation super robot Jumbos that would look just fine without their stickers...but not this one. In my opinion anyway. I'm actually getting (a MIB) one of these soon (the LJN release...with the sword!), and I'm already looking into picking up those vinyl repro decals from r-j!

Anyway, great job, Lttr Prssd! It's awesome to see someone really devoting the time and care for a single toy--it really shows you're passionate about the toy and/or the character. If only that were the norm on the rest of the board...

Actually, the stickers on this guy were STUCK. I was expecting a much easier job of peeling them off. They were brittle for sure, but man, that glue was really on there.

So LUCKY!

Haha...I'd *prefer* original stickers even if they were a little beat up like yours...just 'cause. But the one I'm getting's shedding like crazy, and in the end, I'd prefer ALL the stickers--even if repros--to only some original stickers.

A lot of my friends' Voltron III's are in the same predicament. I wonder if yours came from a different manufacturing run or something like that--like, maybe they improved the glue they were using at some point?

Well, I would have left the stickers as is, if the thing hadn't been so grimy. Years of dust that had turned into gunk was in every crevice. Only a few stickers were missing.

But I do like having a super clean Voltron that looks brand new, even if the stickers are repros.

Oh, I agree with your decision--I like my toys clean, too!

Hey Mark! Imagine finding you here

I have the same figure, missing about 40% of the stickers from peeling. A bunch of them fell off last time I took it from storage, I set them aside and somebody in my house thought hey were trash and pitched them.

This figure has special meaning to me, my Dad bought it for me back when I was a piss poor punk living in Pittsburgh. I need to bring it back to like-new condition.

Great job, Lttr Prssd!




I am pretty sure that the LJN came with a sticker sheet, not already applied. I applied those original suckers to mine when I got a boxed version many years ago (before repros were common).

Damn, that looks fantastic. I have the recent giant voltron from matty...but does hold a candle to some OG goodness. I still want one made of metal too.