why she began to melt.?

[dwaynel2]

When people are talking about damage around joints I wonder whether deformation hastens the process? ie: bending and stretching the TPE breaks down the chemical bonds quicker. Doesn't explain the heads but might explain why hands and shoulders are breaking down while the rest of the body isn't too bad.

Funny you say that. I have a doll who's hands turned to mush (I had to cut them off) after the finger wires broke. Similarly another one I have seems to be going in the same direction in the hand area, which again has finger wire damage.

[david 68]

This is the part that confuses me.
So did the doll START to smell from an otherwise non smelling condition?
Or was this a foul smelling doll from the start?
The one I have that seems to be starting this process of decomposition is a cheap brand doll, but it didn’t start to smell.

she has always had a strong odor from the start when she arrived and has the time passed its when she started getting softer over time and very oily as i can recall., then weaker ,so on that one day to get her changed look its when i saw the great melt down. it took some time to reach that level of decomposition. From the start its seemed ok but it wasn't. it seemed she was dissolving into a slow death. It was like oil and jello at each other's neck.

[david 68]

Oh god!
Why oh why did I click on this thread

I can't unsee this

sorry that you had to click on this thread to see the horror of what is happening to poorly cheap garage made ,not knowing how to mix dolls. but its happening or it happend........ its a real reality that there out making , selling these poison dolls for $$$.......... i'm also hearing and seeing about weak welded frames fall apart too...............but that's another topic.

[john1972]

I am wondering ..
The dolls that melted rather fast..
Corn Starch or Baby Powder?

I know that Corn Starch is made from food grade items
and Baby Powder is Talc..
I just got a TPE doll from some friends second hand at a really decent
price and was going to put her into the shower to wash her.
I read noooo nooo no reason to do that, Just use a spray bottle with a mix
of simple hand soap or shampoo and spray her down and wipe her off lol...
Well soon as I started doing this areas that I had washed I could see the
line of powder or corn starch that had built up..
A sticky mess quickly happened and I will be taking her into the shower
after all to wash all this off.

But the moral of the story is....
Could Talc Powder or even Corn Starch be pissing off some types of TPE?
Excelling the break down process?

[david 68]

talc ,corn starch or baby powder are NOT the cause of a melt down.

[Aerith Died]

And thus silicone is confirmed as the next purchase lol. Shits gonna haunt my dreams thanks

[john1972]

It just confuses me..
Some people have had there TPE for years without issues.
I know that TPE is sensitive to some things and was just an idea
about the powdering thing ..
I mean everyone powders there dolls lol.
Would be quite the kick in the ass if we found out years latter it
was our powder doing it lol.
But I am no chemist lol.

I remember when I was young I used to love Halloween..
It was my fav time of year.
Always getting new mask and trying to be as scary as I could.
There was a place I used to get my mask from and pretty much all
of those mask where made from real latex.
Id wear the mask for Halloween and then the mask would get put
away for the year and often id go to dig out the mask next year and
parts of the mask would be crunchy and some a melted gooey mess.
I did not have internet when I was young so had no real way to find
out "Why" , Just like we are asking here.. "Why does TPE melt down"..
Latter on I found out it was not the masks fault ..
It was not the Latex fault.
It was ME.. Something as simple as breathing inside the mask caused
the latex to break down ..

TPE leaches oils and any powder you put on them that does not get wiped
off often soaks some of this oil up.
You end up with more on your doll then you think when you go to wash her ..
During this process of powder build up you are touching her.
Having sex with her.
Many things that may also become soaked into that layer of powder..
Maybe those silly white gloves you get in your box when you get your new
doll are smarter then you think lol.
Do we REALLY know that maybe just touching our TPE dolls after maybe touching
something else that we are not transferring unwelcome things onto our girls.

I have a quite old TPE insert that I hardly use.
10 years old probably or close...
It stays in the plastic bag and the box it came in.
To this day it is perfectly fine.
Why is it fine?
Maybe its fine because I am not holding it, Touching it , Smearing strange powder
on it.
It is simply being left alone.

It just makes me think sure there is probably bad TPE out there.
But I look at the Leathermans girls and they are like perfect and they pose them
and take photos all the time with them.
But they are also clean and take care of there dolls.
They do not smoke , The dolls are not touching strange stuff.
Maybe it is a kinda thing much like my Mask when I was young.
Something as simple as breathing in the mask that might be triggering some of this
strange TPE meltdowns.

[Mr Franz]

I think you're right John, something beyond TPE's normal life cycle or a bad mixture is causing these dolls to melt. I doubt seriously if it's powder though. For one thing, the melting phenomenon would be more widespread if that were the case. For another, if the powder/cornstarch were drying out the oils in TPE, we'd be looking at excessive cracking, rather than melting.

I get the sticky powder residue buildup from time to time, but that's just sludge from baby oil and powder mixing on the surface. It's not coming from within. Comes right off with more baby oil. Loosen it up with the oil, wipe it right back off. No ill effects going on 4 years now.

As for latex masks degrading, just the oils in your skin can cause those to break down. In fact, the oils in TPE will eat away latex in short order. So yeah, I'm inclined to think there's some sort of chemical reaction taking place causing these dolls to melt. Just can't see where powdering would be the culprit.

[john1972]

Mr Franz

Me either just seems strange why one item made of TPE last YEARS and the next melt down into a pile of goo lol.
It is very scary and its all chemical in one way or another but I am just shocked that some high tech company has
not spent lots of time looking at TPE and figuring out how it ticks in a more high tech way.
Might even be articles on it we just have not found.
TPE is pretty cool stuff but if just looking at it wrong makes it melt well it then becomes not so stable after all and
people start to avoid it just like you are seeing here in this post lol.

But on a funny note ten years ago when I bought my first doll shopping for Silicone dolls where the cost of a decent
car almost lol.
This drove people to flock to TPE when the China Companies starting to spit out TPE dolls for only a couple grand .
Even if the dolls did melt down in a few years to some the couple grand those dolls cost where worth it and just go out
and buy the next best sexy looking TPE doll and do it all over lol.

Business is good just keep doing it lol.
Why should your tires on your car last forever?
Maybe the whole doll market will just end up leaning towards the Disposable way of doing it.
I have a friend that ran an Electronics Repair shop for his full time job since I was a kid I remember going there to his
shop.
Now he finally retired and I was talking to him he said the only work he did at the end was high end audio stuff or old
antique stuff that had value to the person .
At the end hardly ever touched a TV and VCR or DVD player lol.
I remember those costing hundreds of dollars.
He said the consumer electronics market had gone pretty much fully Disposable ..
Buy it use it a few years it breaks sit it to the road and buy new.
Crazy but starting to think the whole doll market is heading that way..

[seagull]

The mixing of TPE blends is not automated
viewtopic.php?p=1813757#p1813757
Do workers sometimes stuff up?
Sure they do
The same can be said of skeletons

[bigboobz]

I have to agree with john1972 and Mr Franz on this. As I was reading over this thread I could not help but notice somethings that would not correspond with a bad batch or getting old hypotheses.
In my mind, when I see the pics I think some other liquor or substance is slowly and gradually seeping into the TPE and causing it to loosen its bonds.
(Possibly as the oil dries out and new mineral oil is not added back in to replace it or too much oil is added or has migrated to one spot?) Were any of the dolls affected here oiled on a somewhat regular schedule? Too much or too little?
The pic that stuck out to me the most was the hand melting from the palm. I have seen this over and over again in pics in the for sale section. It’s almost like they have some sort of grease or coating on the bit that the wire fingers connect to and after some time it breaks down the surroundings TPE. (Again maybe after oil has evaporated to make room for something else to work it’s way in?) and if it’s on the hands frame component, it could also be on the joints or other areas. Something similar could be happening with the head with wigs or possibly the internal frame of the head being coated with something that only interested when the TPE start to dry out.
To me this makes sense when the damage is limited to specific areas and then spreads. As if the it’s distributing from an area of high concentration to (dry) areas of low concentration. I have seen WD40 do this to other materials but it was much faster. So maybe a grease or silicone lube used in construction or from external exposure is causing a time delayed reaction?
Just my $0.02

I had something similar, but nothing like these.

Ami's old hands...

P1010414 (2).JPG

P1010416 (2).JPG

These were replaced about a year ago and have been stored in a cupboard ever since. The cause of this was over oiling.
It has gotten worse whilst in storage. Ive thrown them away, they're useless.
Tyr

[seagull]

Arthur1960 used to regularly oil his dolls but found the fingers would become saturated with oil and start to turn to mush
Just uses a smear of Vaseline as needed on the fingers now

[BaboonEater69]

I have to agree with john1972 and Mr Franz on this. As I was reading over this thread I could not help but notice somethings that would not correspond with a bad batch or getting old hypotheses.
In my mind, when I see the pics I think some other liquor or substance is slowly and gradually seeping into the TPE and causing it to loosen its bonds.
(Possibly as the oil dries out and new mineral oil is not added back in to replace it or too much oil is added or has migrated to one spot?) Were any of the dolls affected here oiled on a somewhat regular schedule? Too much or too little?
The pic that stuck out to me the most was the hand melting from the palm. I have seen this over and over again in pics in the for sale section. It’s almost like they have some sort of grease or coating on the bit that the wire fingers connect to and after some time it breaks down the surroundings TPE. (Again maybe after oil has evaporated to make room for something else to work it’s way in?) and if it’s on the hands frame component, it could also be on the joints or other areas. Something similar could be happening with the head with wigs or possibly the internal frame of the head being coated with something that only interested when the TPE start to dry out.
To me this makes sense when the damage is limited to specific areas and then spreads. As if the it’s distributing from an area of high concentration to (dry) areas of low concentration. I have seen WD40 do this to other materials but it was much faster. So maybe a grease or silicone lube used in construction or from external exposure is causing a time delayed reaction?
Just my $0.02

I had something similar, but nothing like these.

Ami's old hands...

P1010414 (2).JPG

P1010416 (2).JPG

These were replaced about a year ago and have been stored in a cupboard ever since. The cause of this was over oiling.
It has gotten worse whilst in storage. Ive thrown them away, they're useless.
Tyr

This is very very likely imo. I have read tons of stories of joints going on dolls that were never moved! Why would a joint that is never or rarely moved be rotting? Its the mechanical grease in the skeleton. They wrap the joints in cloth to prevent pinching of the TPE but every time I see a repair and the old cloth coming off, I also see that the old cloth is soaked in oils that you don't see in the factory images of pre molding. This makes me think the body is oiling the cloth which gives the mechanical grease a medium to transfer to and then it works its way back into the TPE as it dries.

That and over oiling. I am starting to believe a lot of people's dolls are just entirely over saturated even if they think they are going light. When my cheap ebay love hip from 4-5 years ago is still in perfect shape when I never oiled it once, and people who treat their dolls like their spouses are watching them crumble into goo.. Something is off about how we think about TPE.

[Fantastic Plastic]

The racyme I had that started turning to goo was unused and never oiled.
Went bad at the shoulders but the head was fine.
Also felt like the knėes were turning from the inside.
So the grease theory seems plausible.
Possibly a synthetic or silicone containing grease?
Only happened to the cheap doll.

[david 68]

the dolls that melted never seen a rub of oil on them never instead she still melted away. she did have a strong order of what it smelled like something you would pour into a engine or a tank.... ......i'm still sadden by the two that i lost this year .fortunately i was not a fan of oiling my gurls.......but maybe at ......welll one day i'll get around to it has oil wrestling playtime.it doesn't hurt to try it once . but i'll be sure to wipe them clean from oil on them. i'm pretty sure those two came from a truck garage factory.