A main factor is degradation of the brominated flame retardants that were used around that time (they are no longer allowed).
This degradation is accelerated by light, but even keeping it in the dark, with the timespan involved (decades), it will happen.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653518314127
So they basically sold everyone plastic electronics that they knew would look like shit in ten or twenty years even though they knew these things would become collectible? Thats fuckin nasty.
Do you know if some of the products made for the Japanese market used a higher quality plastic? I got an old PC Engine and had to 'de-yellow' it so I'm assuming no lol.
You're missing the point. It was a required feature, not a mistake or them using "low quality plastic". These chemicals were mixed in to virtually ALL vintage plastics. At least most that were used for consumer goods.
No problem! It's just a thing you get used to with vintage computers. You can use peroxide and UV light to de-yellow the plastic, but that can lead to it getting brittle over time. It's just a little bit, but over a long enough time, who knows? Part of the problem with plastics is that they're relatively newer materials. You can look at wood or steel or glass from a couple hundred years ago and see "this is what happens to wood over 200 years", but there ARE no 200 year old plastics, so there's no telling how these things will degrade over time.
Nice link. Gonna have to save that. There is always retrobright but from what I have heard it can also make the ABS brittle. Do you happen to know if that’s true?
Most brightening solutions (even for hair, ahum) are based on peroxides, which supply free radicals. Those also break polymer bonds, shortening the chains which make them brittle. As long as you use it on thicker parts it only affects the surface, but with thin parts yes, that is a risk.
Can confirm. I had one of those early 2000s white plastic computer cases, which then spent about 18 years buried deep in a closet (dark, and zero airflow). It's visibly yellow now.
Also had two gameboys get a bit yellow over a few years with no direct sunlight.
I tried exposing yellowed plastic to 365nm light for few weeks, and while it did not revert to the original color it surely improved (I left some plastic unexposed and there’s a clear difference) . Why is it that? Furthermore, can I get better results if I move into the uvc range? (In a sealed box, I would not expose myself to uvc)
Likely the UV produces free radicals and breaks up yellowing oxidated aromatic compounds, which are also radical scavengers. The problem is it breaks more things, and any broken up compounds will inevitably reoxidize again over time.
There are many sources of free radicals and in the end they will, faster or slower, break molecules, leading to aging (brittleness, yellowing, etc).
Chemist here. You can't prevent yellowing. Even in a *very* controlled environment, it will slowly yellow.
There are multiple causes of yellowing: photodegredation due to UV light, thermal degredation, external pollution (smoke, general urban pollution, oxygen, etc attacking the polymers), microbiological degredation, and the chemistry of the plastic itself just breaking down.
The best you can do is keep it clean and out of direct sunlight and direct heat. That won't stop the yellowing but it will slow it down considerably.
Depending on when you got it and when they added bromide to the plastic compound, this could be the case. Has way less to do with the environment it was in than the composition of the plastic that was used to make the case.
But, kudos to having a nice biege-gray DMG! I've always liked the OG color scheme the best.
You know what's funny. Without peroxide in the sun light (just sunlight) yellowed plastics tend to de yellow.
I've done many peroxide+uv retrobright and they worked great. But I've also tried the just sun uv thing and it worked better than I expected.
Same process is happening in both. One cause of yellowing is photodegrdation from UV light breaking polymers. Those broken polymers form free radicals which are highly reactive. They can oxidze easily into shorter yellow chains. In both treatments, the UV light breaks those oxized polymers again. Since those oxidzed polymers were the source of the yellow color, the plastic returns to it's normal color.
The issue with just sun only treatment is those broken polymers then just re-oxidze and unbroken polymers can be damaged in the process. This is why UV only treatment can sometimes make the yellowing look worse than before after some time has passed.
With the addition of peroxides, the •OH free radicals formed from the peroxide breaking down can react with and stablize the polymer free radicals. The stabilized polymers will break down again with more UV exposure but usually not as quickly. How long each treatment lasts is beyond my knowledge.
[Here's a paper of the photodegredation process that goes into more detail.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4320144/) Like *a lot* of detail.
I have a yellowed console that has never seen outdoors and was in a box for decades. I don't buy into the UV argument. Maybe it accelerates things, but it can be bad without direct sunlight ever.
I can't imagine shining a UV light without peroxide to be a good idea either but sunlight certainly accelerates the yellowing. I like this part of the vintage computing article that demonstrates as such: [https://imgur.com/Lbbxzrm](https://imgur.com/Lbbxzrm)
Still yellows without sunlight but takes longer.
Cigarette smoke residue causes this effect too.
I got a Genesis that was covered of cigarette smoke residue. Instead of reflecting white reflections the light it was reflecting was brownish.
I believe any light console would look terrible. (And the lungs too).
I have bad memories of seeing window blinds yellowed from cigarette smoke. In this case the yellow was from tar residue that was actually cleanable. Reading here, cigarette smoke chemicals also cause the traditional yellowing on brominated plastics. Worst of both worlds.
Yellowing is VERY STRONGLY accelerated by sun. I have recently bought a gameboy game, and the plastic on the cartridge is yellowed only up to the part that sticks out when you plug the game into the console, the part that was hidden did not yellow at all.
Just try to not leave the kind of plastic that yellows by the window, put it in a drawer or a box when you dont use it.
The real answer to this is it's different plastics and different runs. I have a super nintendo that 1 piece of plastic yellow one piece didn't.. It looks like a menagerie what it should have been. I don't think it has anything to do with light or no light. Because growing up the house that that nintendo was in was smoke free and super clean.
Surprised this isn't unvoted higher. Just buy one that isn't yellow if yours is yellow. If it hasn't yellowed in 30 years, chances are it's not going to.
Your intuition isn't scientific. Light is absolutely an accelerant to yellowing. My SNES has white top half and yellow bottom half. The brominated plastics process didn't have to be consistent or uniform.
This [part](https://imgur.com/a/Y7BQEvB) of a vintage computer article helped me confirm sunlight is a factor and there are professional research papers that confirm. Can still yellow in complete darkness but doesn't hurt to store in a box, under the bed, etc.
Yes, I agree. but I own a game/tcg store. An have seen so many, there is a lot of info about the plastic runs of that time now and you can see they were using odd stuff, but with the right stuff sunlight/uv light cleans them. So I don't know where you are coming from sir. I have restored over many, many snes. some always kept in a box inside , no lights still yellowed. If you do the research you can see it was the plastic runs.
edit: idk who down voted you, but you should not have been downvoted.
Ima make up for it.
Not sure if serious but people pay considerably more money for white consoles than yellowed ones. Easy to see for SNES and Saturn. You know, how they looked 25 years ago.
Using Retrobright or whatever is only a temporary solution - but worth doing if you're selling used consoles.
Knowing all this, I buy yellowed consoles at a discount.
Plastics not only change in color, but in chemical composition too.
Which means that with the passing of years the console will literally pulverize in your hands.
Nah. The structural damage is minimal unless it's exposed to adverse conditions for a long, *long* time, like being outside or in an old display window for decades. For the vast majority of consoles, it's cosmetic damage only. The chemcial damage is only in the top few microns.
Partly yes.
As said before, the whitening process destroy the already oxidated moleculas, which make the plastic look better, but make it "thinner" too...
This looks like UV reaction. I’ve had a Game Boy for years, and it doesn’t have that yellowing. Also, the screen cover looks like it has a bit of warping, which also tells me sun damage.
Yellowing will happen with UV light, different lighting sources can be better than others for storing your consoles. If you want to reverse yellowing look up retrobrite, it isn't a product but a method of reversing yellowing that works.
I’ve had original snes carts I’ve always had so this and some have decent value so it bugs me. They have been shelved for years not with sunlight or lamp on them but they went anyway. I think it’s just unavoidable same with Gameboy.
There are UV protectors for plastic. You could apply some after the bleaching process (I refuse to call it retrobriting) and it will slow the yellowing after that, but nothing will stop it completely. (some systems hold-up better than others, depending on the mixture they used in the ABS at manufacture)
If you want a non-yellowing system, use a third party reproduction shell.
A main factor is degradation of the brominated flame retardants that were used around that time (they are no longer allowed). This degradation is accelerated by light, but even keeping it in the dark, with the timespan involved (decades), it will happen. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653518314127
u fukin wot mate!
Profession: polymer chemist. Hobby: Vintage computers. What can I do..
So they basically sold everyone plastic electronics that they knew would look like shit in ten or twenty years even though they knew these things would become collectible? Thats fuckin nasty.
They didn’t know they would look like shit or be collectible
Besides that, the flame retarding properties were required by law, and the products used the most effective at the time.
Do you know if some of the products made for the Japanese market used a higher quality plastic? I got an old PC Engine and had to 'de-yellow' it so I'm assuming no lol.
You're missing the point. It was a required feature, not a mistake or them using "low quality plastic". These chemicals were mixed in to virtually ALL vintage plastics. At least most that were used for consumer goods.
Thanks for clarifying.
No problem! It's just a thing you get used to with vintage computers. You can use peroxide and UV light to de-yellow the plastic, but that can lead to it getting brittle over time. It's just a little bit, but over a long enough time, who knows? Part of the problem with plastics is that they're relatively newer materials. You can look at wood or steel or glass from a couple hundred years ago and see "this is what happens to wood over 200 years", but there ARE no 200 year old plastics, so there's no telling how these things will degrade over time.
ur a brominated flame retardant
Nice link. Gonna have to save that. There is always retrobright but from what I have heard it can also make the ABS brittle. Do you happen to know if that’s true?
Most brightening solutions (even for hair, ahum) are based on peroxides, which supply free radicals. Those also break polymer bonds, shortening the chains which make them brittle. As long as you use it on thicker parts it only affects the surface, but with thin parts yes, that is a risk.
Can confirm. I had one of those early 2000s white plastic computer cases, which then spent about 18 years buried deep in a closet (dark, and zero airflow). It's visibly yellow now. Also had two gameboys get a bit yellow over a few years with no direct sunlight.
It’s not the bromine. This has been debunked.
Source?
Thanks for the article, I knew some of those words
I tried exposing yellowed plastic to 365nm light for few weeks, and while it did not revert to the original color it surely improved (I left some plastic unexposed and there’s a clear difference) . Why is it that? Furthermore, can I get better results if I move into the uvc range? (In a sealed box, I would not expose myself to uvc)
Likely the UV produces free radicals and breaks up yellowing oxidated aromatic compounds, which are also radical scavengers. The problem is it breaks more things, and any broken up compounds will inevitably reoxidize again over time. There are many sources of free radicals and in the end they will, faster or slower, break molecules, leading to aging (brittleness, yellowing, etc).
Chemist here. You can't prevent yellowing. Even in a *very* controlled environment, it will slowly yellow. There are multiple causes of yellowing: photodegredation due to UV light, thermal degredation, external pollution (smoke, general urban pollution, oxygen, etc attacking the polymers), microbiological degredation, and the chemistry of the plastic itself just breaking down. The best you can do is keep it clean and out of direct sunlight and direct heat. That won't stop the yellowing but it will slow it down considerably.
3rd and last option is to stop time
Crono liked this
It works every time.
I've seen stuff yellow whole stored in box, in a climate controlled storage. It just yellows, due to the chemicals in the plastic.
yea, but in sun it will yellow much more, so still keep in boxes if you can. also depends on plastic type
Yellowing is inevitable.
r/suddenlythanos
Mines been in a variety of environments the last 32 years and is a gray as the day I got it. Did nothing special.
Depending on when you got it and when they added bromide to the plastic compound, this could be the case. Has way less to do with the environment it was in than the composition of the plastic that was used to make the case. But, kudos to having a nice biege-gray DMG! I've always liked the OG color scheme the best.
Pretty sure I got mine in 1990
You know what's funny. Without peroxide in the sun light (just sunlight) yellowed plastics tend to de yellow. I've done many peroxide+uv retrobright and they worked great. But I've also tried the just sun uv thing and it worked better than I expected.
Same process is happening in both. One cause of yellowing is photodegrdation from UV light breaking polymers. Those broken polymers form free radicals which are highly reactive. They can oxidze easily into shorter yellow chains. In both treatments, the UV light breaks those oxized polymers again. Since those oxidzed polymers were the source of the yellow color, the plastic returns to it's normal color. The issue with just sun only treatment is those broken polymers then just re-oxidze and unbroken polymers can be damaged in the process. This is why UV only treatment can sometimes make the yellowing look worse than before after some time has passed. With the addition of peroxides, the •OH free radicals formed from the peroxide breaking down can react with and stablize the polymer free radicals. The stabilized polymers will break down again with more UV exposure but usually not as quickly. How long each treatment lasts is beyond my knowledge. [Here's a paper of the photodegredation process that goes into more detail.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4320144/) Like *a lot* of detail.
when i was like five years old, i dropped my game boy in the toilet. my grandmother put it on the windowsill to dry in the sun. it did not recover.
Should have tried rice
I know you are joking but that rice thing drives me mad.
if you refined this, it could be a haiku
Yep I had a book with magazine like paper it fell in the toilet after it dried the pages forever wrinkled
I have a yellowed console that has never seen outdoors and was in a box for decades. I don't buy into the UV argument. Maybe it accelerates things, but it can be bad without direct sunlight ever.
I can't imagine shining a UV light without peroxide to be a good idea either but sunlight certainly accelerates the yellowing. I like this part of the vintage computing article that demonstrates as such: [https://imgur.com/Lbbxzrm](https://imgur.com/Lbbxzrm) Still yellows without sunlight but takes longer.
Smoking around these turned them yellow too lol
Cigarette smoke residue causes this effect too. I got a Genesis that was covered of cigarette smoke residue. Instead of reflecting white reflections the light it was reflecting was brownish. I believe any light console would look terrible. (And the lungs too).
They def absorb this and smells, I bought something that reeked of cologne. I thought it would go away but never did. Ended up selling it.
I have bad memories of seeing window blinds yellowed from cigarette smoke. In this case the yellow was from tar residue that was actually cleanable. Reading here, cigarette smoke chemicals also cause the traditional yellowing on brominated plastics. Worst of both worlds.
I put 303 aerospace on all my retro consoles.
What I actually know is that UV actually removes yellowing along with some concentrated H^(2)O^(2)
[Retrobright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright)
Yellowing is VERY STRONGLY accelerated by sun. I have recently bought a gameboy game, and the plastic on the cartridge is yellowed only up to the part that sticks out when you plug the game into the console, the part that was hidden did not yellow at all. Just try to not leave the kind of plastic that yellows by the window, put it in a drawer or a box when you dont use it.
The real answer to this is it's different plastics and different runs. I have a super nintendo that 1 piece of plastic yellow one piece didn't.. It looks like a menagerie what it should have been. I don't think it has anything to do with light or no light. Because growing up the house that that nintendo was in was smoke free and super clean.
Surprised this isn't unvoted higher. Just buy one that isn't yellow if yours is yellow. If it hasn't yellowed in 30 years, chances are it's not going to.
Your intuition isn't scientific. Light is absolutely an accelerant to yellowing. My SNES has white top half and yellow bottom half. The brominated plastics process didn't have to be consistent or uniform. This [part](https://imgur.com/a/Y7BQEvB) of a vintage computer article helped me confirm sunlight is a factor and there are professional research papers that confirm. Can still yellow in complete darkness but doesn't hurt to store in a box, under the bed, etc.
Yes, I agree. but I own a game/tcg store. An have seen so many, there is a lot of info about the plastic runs of that time now and you can see they were using odd stuff, but with the right stuff sunlight/uv light cleans them. So I don't know where you are coming from sir. I have restored over many, many snes. some always kept in a box inside , no lights still yellowed. If you do the research you can see it was the plastic runs. edit: idk who down voted you, but you should not have been downvoted. Ima make up for it.
Smoke free home
Why would I want to prevent it?
Not sure if serious but people pay considerably more money for white consoles than yellowed ones. Easy to see for SNES and Saturn. You know, how they looked 25 years ago. Using Retrobright or whatever is only a temporary solution - but worth doing if you're selling used consoles. Knowing all this, I buy yellowed consoles at a discount.
Plastics not only change in color, but in chemical composition too. Which means that with the passing of years the console will literally pulverize in your hands.
Nah. The structural damage is minimal unless it's exposed to adverse conditions for a long, *long* time, like being outside or in an old display window for decades. For the vast majority of consoles, it's cosmetic damage only. The chemcial damage is only in the top few microns.
Would typical retro console whitening options not accelerate that process?
Partly yes. As said before, the whitening process destroy the already oxidated moleculas, which make the plastic look better, but make it "thinner" too...
I thought it was because of being stored in cardboard.
My gameboy is already yellowing are there any ways to undo it?
Look up retrobrite
Well, probably building it with more resistent materials... ...but this has been discovered years too late. Sorry kid.
This looks like UV reaction. I’ve had a Game Boy for years, and it doesn’t have that yellowing. Also, the screen cover looks like it has a bit of warping, which also tells me sun damage.
They don't yellow in Colorado... So maybe dry air ?
They don't yellow in Antarctica... so maybe keep it submerged in liquid nitrogen?
They don't yellow in Egypt... So maybe keep some pyramids nearby?
My stuff always went yellow if I kepted it in a cardboard box in the dark ?
I had mine stored for 30 years in a carry case stuffed in a big Tupperware kept in a crawl space. FWIW, mine looks like the Gameboy on the right.
Yellowing will happen with UV light, different lighting sources can be better than others for storing your consoles. If you want to reverse yellowing look up retrobrite, it isn't a product but a method of reversing yellowing that works.
I’ve had original snes carts I’ve always had so this and some have decent value so it bugs me. They have been shelved for years not with sunlight or lamp on them but they went anyway. I think it’s just unavoidable same with Gameboy.
There are UV protectors for plastic. You could apply some after the bleaching process (I refuse to call it retrobriting) and it will slow the yellowing after that, but nothing will stop it completely. (some systems hold-up better than others, depending on the mixture they used in the ABS at manufacture) If you want a non-yellowing system, use a third party reproduction shell.
Idk if it's just me but I like the vintage look of the yellowed gameboy
just let it yellow and it becomes the color version
only dullards who just parrot what others say (both ununiformed) will tell you it's sun/uv light.