Stains showing up after shipping.

So, I recieved a doll in the mail, it had been in transit for three days and when I had received it, the feet had a slight grey to it. I gently rubbed at it with a magic eraser and the vinyl started turning dark grey. I didnt see pics of her feet before buying but the seller said that there was no greying before they shipped it. It was neatly wrapped in bubble wrap. A few hours have gone by and the dark color is only getting worse. Has anyone experienced this before? Image of the foot stain.

I suspect what you are seeing is capillary action or a similar effect specific to vinyl.

Basically something on the bubble wrap has stained the vinyl, and it is still being drawn into the vinyl. 

Was the bubble wrap that dark grey stuff?

You’re going to have to stain treat them. 

The bad news is feet are hard vinyl, and dark stains will take awhile to get out. I would suggest get some Dream Rescue and start as soon as you can while the stain is fresh. 

For ASAP treatment, you can go to a pharmacy and get a cream with benzoyl peroxide cream, 10% (like Oxy10). Apply generously, wrap in some saran wrap, and let sit in a warm room (in direct sunlight if that's an option). 

One other note, you should be able to get the stain completely out, but it will take awhile. 

You can always just buy new feet too. Dream Rescue will cost about half what new feet do. 

Edit: Pretty sure Oxy is a good bit cheaper than Dream Rescue. 

Edited September 12, 2019 by BeyondTime

I agree. There may have been some type of residue on the bubble wrap or inside the packaging box. But Dream Rescue should take care of it. To me it looks like really fine lead or metallic dust. Be quick though it could eat into the vinyl. 

This brings up something I've been curious about forever. Anyone find magic eraser of any use at all on DDs? Danny Choo even recommends it, but I can't see what it can do. Magic eraser is an abrasive meant to remove surface stains, which isn't what vinyl stains are probably 99% of the time. Being an abrasive, what it likely will do is affect the surface texture of the vinyl, making shiny spots.

I think another possibility for what happened is the feet were stained at some previous time, probably by black shoes or socks. Then they were treated and the stains went away. But with the way the dyes spread through the vinyl, there can still be dye below the surface where it isn't visible. In shipping the doll to you it got hot, cold, different humidity, whatever, that could cause dye to migrate to the surface again. I believe it is @K-2 who has written a better description here, somewhere, about how dye migrates through vinyl.

Volks recomended using their sponge thing during one of the SD panels. They did a thing on prepping parts for painting, and on cleaning the dolls. Both panels recomended the sponge  

Sorry, I don’t know how to spell the name of the sponge and google isn’t helping. 

1 hour ago, cfx said:

This brings up something I've been curious about forever. Anyone find magic eraser of any use at all on DDs? Danny Choo even recommends it, but I can't see what it can do. Magic eraser is an abrasive meant to remove surface stains, which isn't what vinyl stains are probably 99% of the time. Being an abrasive, what it likely will do is affect the surface texture of the vinyl, making shiny spots.

I think another possibility for what happened is the feet were stained at some previous time, probably by black shoes or socks. Then they were treated and the stains went away. But with the way the dyes spread through the vinyl, there can still be dye below the surface where it isn't visible. In shipping the doll to you it got hot, cold, different humidity, whatever, that could cause dye to migrate to the surface again. I believe it is @K-2 who has written a better description here, somewhere, about how dye migrates through vinyl.

Exactly. The Magic Eraser "sponge" is a mild abrasive and can be very useful for removing surface soil. Dye and other types of stains (like from metals) will "soak" into vinyl, not just spread on the surface. This process of dye/chemical migration will continue till the staining material diffuses in the vinyl. Some small/light colored stains can seem to disappear over time as the staining material diffuses in the vinyl. Larger stains can have a much higher concentration of staining material and may never fade in appearance.

And as you mention aggressive scrubbing can cause shiny areas as you scrub off the slight texture that helps give vinyl its matte appearance.

41 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

Volks recommended using their sponge thing during one of the SD panels. They did a thing on prepping parts for painting, and on cleaning the dolls. Both panels recommended the sponge  

Sorry, I don’t know how to spell the name of the sponge and google isn’t helping. 

The Magic Eraser sponge is great for cleaning surface soil, which will provide a better (cleaner) surface for paint adhesion. Even new dolls fresh from the factory may not be perfectly clean, still having chemical residues on their surface from the manufacturing process not to mention skin oils from incidental handling.

1 hour ago, BeyondTime said:

Volks recomended using their sponge thing during one of the SD panels. They did a thing on prepping parts for painting, and on cleaning the dolls. Both panels recomended the sponge

For resin, I can see the use, and that there wouldn't be many negatives.

3 hours ago, cfx said:

This brings up something I've been curious about forever. Anyone find magic eraser of any use at all on DDs?

When I used those cheap glasses on Mel, he got a small mark on his face that I was able to get off with one. Unfortuntely he got another one later that was a much much smaller dot that didnt come off with the same amount of rubbing, and I didnt want to overdo it in case I ended up removing the MSC from his faceup or something. Luckily its barely noticeable (especially because his glasses usually cover it anyway) and even though he's currently cosplaying a non-glasses character atm, I had to seriously look for it just then to confirm it was actually there.

I also got some marks of my MDD's hands. I did this quickly though, I dont know how useful it would be if I'd left the marks there a few days.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Monty

15 hours ago, K-2 said:

The Magic Eraser sponge is great for cleaning surface soil, which will provide a better (cleaner) surface for paint adhesion. Even new dolls fresh from the factory may not be perfectly clean, still having chemical residues on their surface from the manufacturing process not to mention skin oils from incidental handling.

I was thinking of the Pikatto Kirei Sponge. I know they recommended it for their resins, but I can't recall about the Vinyls.

Edit: 

15 hours ago, cfx said:

For resin, I can see the use, and that there wouldn't be many negatives.

I left something out earlier. The doll care panel spent some time on DD too, but just focused on cleaning. I just can’t recall if they suggested using the sponge to clean DD. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by BeyondTime