Retr0Bright: The Cure for Yellowed Plastic

Do you have a yellowed game console or classic computer sitting in your closet? Are you ashamed to display it because of the unwanted color change it's experienced over the past 20 years? I was in this position, when I recently rescued my Tandy Color Computer 2 from storage. What was once a pristine system in near new condition was now a yellow disaster.

The last time I went looking for a solution to this problem, all I could find online were advice pages suggesting painting the system white or soaking it in bleach. However, this time I found the Retr0Bright site, which offers the perfect solution. A simple homebrew formula for deyellowing precious 80s heirlooms, which costs less than 20 dollars to make and gives fantastic results.


For all the details of preparing Retr0Bright and the science behind it, you should consult the actual link above. I just wanted to give an overview of what I used, and some of my results.



Here are my ingredients. The laundry booster was around 3 dollars at Dollar General, the Glycerine and corn starch were around 4 dollars total at Wal-Mart, and the peroxide was 11 dollars at the local Sally's Beauty Supply. All told it cost about 19 dollars with tax to get the ingredients to make several batches of Retr0Bright. I mixed everything in the blender and stored it in the black glass canister you see in the title picture.

I painted the Retr0Bright on with a cooking brush on a nice, sunny Florida day with the temperature around 90 degrees. Here was my first result after about 6 hours of "cooking."



Note the foaming action in the middle shot. That's the chemical reaction at work. Nothing was done to doctor these photos. I just resized them and stuck them side by side. This stuff really works. I mean, honestly, what good would it do to make doctored photos? The formula is free, we make it and use it for our own benefit, right?

So, after that success, I did several other items, including an Apple color monitor, my NES, an SNES, my Apple II disk drives, and finally my Apple II itself. Unfortunately, most of my before and after photos for those other items weren't very good. Not that the results were bad, just my photo composition.

One set that did turn out well for an example are these shots of the Apple II before, during, and after treatment. As you can see, it makes a world of difference.



Retr0Bright is amazing stuff. It's cheap, takes a few minutes to make, and after a few hours of daylight it will give fantastic results. If you've got a yellowed component that needs brightening up, definitely consider whipping up some Retr0Bright to get the job done.

I would caution you, though, to read all the warnings on the Retr0Bright wiki. Check the discussion threads there and look at the pitfalls gallery to make sure you are prepared for things that could go wrong. Use common sense and be careful with highly concentrated peroxide.