Plastic

Last Wednesday, Slate Magazine delivered the worst news it it could have possibly laid on me :

My action figures are doomed.

I’ve lived, until now, under the safe and ignorant delusion that the Hellboy action figure that I bought last week would be passed down through generations, to lots of nerdy future-families. Like an unchanging beacon, cast perfectly in plastic and paints, he’d remain ageless as my distant alien progeny witnessed the theatrical release of Hellboy 11. This, however, is not the case.

First, we were hit with terrible tales of CD rot – the plastic of CDs was slowly starting to reject and eat away at the metallic, information-rich, printed surfaces that were laid upon them. And it was true! My Oingo Boingo ‘Nothing to Fear’ CD, one of the earliest CDs in my collection, was starting to get veins of cracked and shed metallic inks, despite my obsessively gentle handling of it. As soon as MP3s came along, I digitized the heck outta that CD. For personal use, of course.

Now, we’re witnessing the decay of all kinds of plastics – most noticeably, plastics used in great artworks, because of the pristine and safe conditions in which they’re kept. We might attribute the fading of something in regular household use to other factors, but untouched sculptures have begun to visibly sag and weep strange colors and chemicals, and there is no scientific solution to revert this aging process, short of freezing the works. We’re only now at a point in the history of plastics, which are only around 100 years old, where we can actually see the first signs of decay, and it spells out a whole mess for collectors.

Some plastics, of course, are much more stable than others. Some notorious instances in the world of action figure collecting are Medicom’s 1/6th scale Luke Skywalker, which oozes green liquid even if it’s never been removed from the package, and the cape of the Kia Asamiya Robin (from a series of Batman figural statues), which is perpetually sticky, no matter what you treat it with. The capes of many of Mattel’s Justice League Unlimited figures have taken on a very dusty look as powders seep from the rubber, and the first Lord of the Rings Cave Troll from ToyBiz used a rubber that allowed the face to move realistically, but all too easily cracked and tore because of its instability.

So, while we see plastics as forever, they’re actually very unstable. They’re just very, very slowly expressing this.

So, will my collection of Batmen or my original resin pieces be a vat of mush before I turn 50? Many of these plastics are too new to even be able to accurately determine their true shelf life. It’s something to consider if you’re investing in anything plastic with the purpose of reselling it later. What you bought might not be what you end up selling, so watch your plastic items carefully.

While there’s no chemical advice to come out of this new discovery, the answers seem to be firmly rooted in common sense : keep your stuff out of sunlight, keep it dry and keep it cool.

It’s hard to view my vast collection of plastic monsters as one of those dreaded ‘transient’ collections, but after this disturbing revelation, it encourages me to appreciate these items for the ‘now’ – not without a little bit of sadness. I might be less inclined to drop big bucks on something with the knowledge that it might later turn green and spray all over my walls, but I don’t think I’ll love my little collection of Jack Kirby characters any less. I wasn’t going to be buried with them anyhow.

At least not that you know of.

Before the 1920s most costume jewelry was made to resemble “the real thing” for those who couldn’t afford jewelry made from costly gems and precious metals. The flappers changed all that. After years of deprivation and sacrifice experience during World War I these young women wanted to have fun. They rebelled against the hardships of wartime by cutting off their waist length tresses, raising their hemlines from the ankle to the knee and partying into the wee hours. When it came to jewelry, they eschewed tasteful gold jewelry for costume pieces in trendy shapes and wild colors.

Couturier and style icon Coco Chanel embraced the costume jewelry trend and encouraged women to use fun costume jewels to accessorize their outfits and express their personalities. Jewelry designers experimented more with the relatively inexpensive materials, and the resulting styles were fun and whimsical.

It was in this environment that plastic jewelry first reached widespread popularity. The plastics most commonly used were Lucite, celluloid and Bakelite. The chemical company Dupont introduced acrylic resin under the trade name Lucite in 1937. Lucite was a colorless plastic that could be carved and molded into different shapes and dyed various shades to create attractive jewelry choices. Lucite was popular throughout the 1940s and is still seen in costume jewelry today.

Celluloid was used in jewelry as early as the 1870s as an alternative to expensive materials like ivory and tortoiseshell. Unfortunately, celluloid had its disadvantages, a major one being that it contained nitric acid, which was very flammable. Jewelry made from celluloid was produced until after World War II, but the development of cheaper plastics (that didn’t catch fire!) caused jewelry makers to abandon the substance. Celluloid jewelry should be kept in a dry, airy place and kept from extreme heat or cold to keep the pieces from damage. Pieces that have already begun to crack and disintegrate can damage other celluloid pieces and should be kept away from them.

Bakelite was created in 1908 and was quickly adopted for use in everything from tabletops to bracelets. Like cellulose, Bakelite was abandoned for cheaper materials after the war, and today Bakelite items are highly sought by collectors.

Read more about Bakelite: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/36293/bakelite_collectible_plastic.html