"Any tips for stripping paint from a toy dragon?" Topic

I'm thinking about stripping the paint off one of these Safari toy dragons before painting it as The Metallic Dragon. IIRC a very early "The Dragon" magazine described Bahamut as an Asian dragon and I'd like to give that a try.

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Any TMP'ers have experience with this? I've got "goop off", Brake fluid, acetone and simple green currently, but I wanted to get the wisdom of TMP before experimenting.

You could try just priming over it.

Could, but a lot of toys get very thick paint jobs at the factory, obscuring a lot of potential detail. The claws & teeth of this fig look like they had a lot of detail before the paint was glopped on, so it might be worth the trouble to strip this one.

Edit: There is another colour of the fig available, when i saw it in store it was a a much lighter purple than it's online pics show, but the details look a little crisper, so I'm confident the detail is there.

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And the manufacturer paints are often as tough as the toy they are painted onto, making stripping them without melting the fig tricky.

Thanks for the quick response.

No idea what to use to strip with.

Have you considered just doing a varnish wash ("the dip" or Future + paint etc) to get shade detail and then highlighting with metallics?

Or possibly mixing a thin wash of metallic, to distribute metallic flakes all over the current color? You know how sometimes when painting with metallics we forget to rinse our brush in a separate cup and then use the same water for regular paints and end up with metallic flakes in the paint … but this time do it on purpose?

The problem with some of those plastic figs is that the color is part of the molding process. It might not be too easy to remove.

Ive had good luck with Simple Green. Ive had it remove enamel and acrylic paints along with primer. I havent had it affect any plastics in a negative way. Maybe try it out on a cheap item to see if does any good.

Prime over it – I have tons of kids toys and it's not worth the trouble. Try it and if it doesn't work that primer layer will be simple to remove.

I'll second the Magic Wash over existing paints idea. Barring that, I'll second the prime-over recommendation. Easy to un-do either of these options; if the stripper chemicals damage the figure, the only option is to replace it. Cheers!

If my experiments slag the figure, it's not that big of a deal. Buying more than a few new strippers would cost me more than a new Safari Blue Chinese Dragon from Micheals ($7 w/coupon). I was just hoping to see if anyone knew what stuff worked.

I'll try simple green since you suggested it, Chuck. I didn't think it would be potent enough TBH.

I use Simple Green undiluted. I get the gallon jug and just use it straight out of the jug.

Chuck

When you paint make sure you wash it to get rid of any residues, plastic toys can be a swine for that. To help paint stick give it a light rubbing with fine emery paper and, depending how flexible the plastic is, a diluted pva undercoat will help.

Dozing Dragon, washing isn't always enough, the plastic can absorb the stronger chems or be changed by the chems. Even a quick acetone scrub on a Mage knight fundamentally changes the plastic, leaching out some of the plasticity after it 'dries' DAYS later. Some spray primers do similar things to Wotc plastics, causing them to feel tacky.

EDIT: 7 hours after dropping some samples in simple green, no effect.

Simple green had no effect on the figure or the paint after 3 days. Might try "goof-off" next