Vintage Fisher Price Little People – Properly Store Them For Future Use
Posted on: 26 May 2016
Fisher Price Little People sets from the 70's still have a huge fan-base. Most adults at this time can remember playing with these awesome toy sets as children themselves, with their kids or with their grand-kids. Today, the toys are getting harder to find and pretty valuable. If you have your Little People sets that you want to hold onto for your kids or your grand-kids, you must make sure that they are stored properly to ensure they come out in perfectly playable condition when you're ready for them.
Clean the Toys
The people are easy enough to clean – get a 5 gallon bucket of hot water and add a half cup of bleach. The bleach will disinfect the toys while they soak in the mixture, as well as remove much of the dirt and debris that is stuck to them. After they are clean, set them up right-side-up on a towel or drying rack in the sun. There will be water trapped inside some of them, so let them out to dry for a day or two before you pack them up.
Now cleaning the sets and furniture is a little more difficult. You have to be careful not to damage the stickers while cleaning them. The best method of cleaning these sets is to fill a bucket with hot water and some liquid dish soap. Dip a clean cloth into the mixture and wring it out very well. You want the cloth to be damp, not dripping wet to avoid over-wetting the stickers.
If you see spots that won't come off easily, you can use a bit of Goo-Gone on a cotton ball to scrub it off, but don't do this on the stickers or you will pull the color out of the sticker and cause the sticker to become soft and rip.
Let everything dry before you begin packing.
Pack the Toys
You might be tempted to fill each of the buildings with as much stuff as you can to decrease the size of the box you need. Don't do this – it could cause damage to the stickers inside the building and cause paint rubs on the figures and furniture.
Instead, gather all of the people into one lot and put them in a bucket – empty plastic ice cream buckets work very well, but make sure to poke a few holes in the top of it to allow moisture to be released from the bucket.
Box the buildings in boxes and layer some sheets of cardboard over them so that you can put more in the box without scratching them or damaging the stickers. Don't overfill the boxes and make them too heavy to handle.
Store the Toys
For the best results, the area in which you store the toys must be climate-controlled. You don't want these toys exposed to high temperatures or humidity. That type of climate will cause the plastic to become frail, cause mold growth, and rust all metal components of the sets.
If you don't have somewhere in your home to safely store these toys, rent a storage unit at your local storage facility to store them and anything else you want to hold onto for the future.
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