Vintage toys are one of my passions. I love collecting various toys, especially from the 80’s and 90’s when I grew up. I also have an online toy selling business, although I’m pausing it for the next few months to focus on this website and my art and writing.
Anyway, I spend a lot of time going to local thrift stores, yard sales, and flea markets, looking for toys for my own collection or to resell. And sometimes I wind up with toys that are broken or missing pieces, that I don’t have to heart to throw away. So I like to repair them if I can, and give them new life. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but there’s something rewarding about restoring an old toy.
I recently repaired all of these toys for my collection.
First up, this poor Rainbow Brite Sprite had a torn up ear. So I cut out a new one out of felt and sewed it back on for him.
Next I made new kitty ears for this Halloween troll doll. I actually do still have the ears somewhere but I haven’t been able to find them. She keeps falling off of the shelf I have her displayed on, and the elastic on her original ears is a little loose because she’s probably a good 30 years old now. So every time she falls the ears fall off separately. And they are small and black so they aren’t very easy to see. I know they’ll turn up eventually, but in the meantime I wanted to give her this replacement pair.
And this was a pretty easy repair: new eye jewels for a G2 My Little Pony named Sea Breeze. I used the guide from Lavender Lagoon to figure out the right size and color. And then I bought a small pack of replacement crystals from eBay.
Finally, poor Potato Chip Popple had a completely missing nose! It looks like maybe a dog chewed it off or something, because the fabric around her nose area is a bit holey and mangled looking as well. I bought a pack of replacement noses off of Amazon of all places– I wanted to find one that was pink and also flocked like her original nose, and I think this one looks pretty close, although it might be a bit smaller than the original. But still, it looks a lot better than it did.
Here they are all together, nice and repaired and sitting on the little shelf on my bedroom where I keep some of my toy collection.
Don’t they look a lot happier now?