Fastest Hunk of Junk in the Galaxy

Just a few helpful tips, for those who might find themselves in a similar situation. First, Kenner plastic holds up amazingly well over time. Seriously, there's hardly any true discoloration to 99% of my collection; I'll chronicle the exceptions later, but for now, let me say that the Falcon is still in awesome shape.

However, being in my parents' garage for about 10 years did take a certain toll on the old girl. I would have loved to have seen the mice nesting over by the radar dish and in her cockpit, because I'm sure it was cute as hell--seriously, the seats are just the right size! But let's not kid ourselves, they're filthy little beasts. So the first step was to get the traces of mildew and mouse residue off the outer hull. This proved to not be so terrible; Lysol Anti-Bacterial Kitchen cleaner, a soft toothbrush, and moist paper towels were all the tools needed. The decals are an issue of course, but much like the plastic, they are tougher than I might have imagined. I wouldn't recommmend soaking them with the cleaner, but gently scrubbing them with a moist brush didn't take them off, and any peeling should be easily fixable with Elmers. The blessing and curse to these Kenner toys is that they have a tremendous amount of surface detail--the whole ship is a maze of crevices, doodads, and little projections which all add to the ship's versimilitude but are a bitch to clean. Still, with patience it can be done. In the next installment, we'll have a look at the finished product, and move on to Chapter Two in I Refuse to Let Go of My Childhood.