Yellowing/Dirty Plastic on SNES

[SoulBlazer]

First, I'm sorry if something has been posted on this, I looked and couldn't find anything.

 

I bought a SNES shortly after it came out in the States, back in December of 1991. I took mint care of it, and no one in my house smoked or anything. It wasn't anywhere near a window either....the main source of light on it was a overhead light.

 

I noticed that as the years passed something was happening to the plastic shell. It started to slowly become discolored, with yellow and organe colors seeping in over most of the unit. In addition, at the corners in the front, the plastic seemed to actually crack, with small little lines.

 

It didn't start happening for about a year or so into, but with each passing year it got worse. By the time I finally got rid of the thing ten years later, hardly any of the original plastic color was left.

 

I've never seen this happen in any other gaming system or anything else. I saw something online that said something about it being due to the type of plastic that they were made in, but friends of mine who bought the system around the same time never had this happen to theirs.

 

Does anyone know and could explain in plain English why this happened and what, if anything, can be done about it?

[Blarginatorr]

I dont know what your friends SNES is made of, but yellowing of the SNES plastic is very common. Must be something with the plastic ingredients Nintendo used like you said.

Though, I havent heard of the plastic cracking, so maybe your SNES case was just from a bad batch?

 

Most plastics contain water to some small percentage, which dissapears with time, resulting as possible cracking and slight deformation. Depending on the plastic formula, the drying can have little to no effect on the plastic though...

Edited March 14, 2010 by Blarginatorr

[+Psionic]

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/138244-how-to-remove-yellowing-from-an-old-atari-case/

[MagitekAngel]

I've got a two-tone SNES: Most of it is an ugly yellow, but the plastic around the cartridge slot and controller ports is pristine: looks like my case came from two different batches of plastic: one they screwed up, and on they didn't.

[Xo4]

I got lucky, my original SNES has had no yellowing whatsoever.

 

I have seen some bad ones though where it was almost pure yellow(no two-toning)

[tz101]

ABS plastic that Nintendo used in the SNES console cases was sensitive to oxidization and UV light. Even if it never saw the sun, much indoor lighting will have an effect on it over a period of years. The fix is to either paint it a cool color scheme, or use a hydrogen peroxide solution bath for a couple days. This procedure is detailed on various sites and works quite well at restoring the original gray color to the ABS shell.