Extreme temperatures and toy storage

Posted by Mike Robinson on Feb 27th 2023

Do you ever think about climate control and extreme temperatures when you store your collectibles? I think about this a lot, and some of that comes from my childhood. We had a fairly small house growing up, so we stored a lot of things in the attic. To make things worse, we lived in the deep South and summer and winter temperatures could be pretty extreme. Over the years, I saw lots of plastic and rubber parts melt or warp in the summer, especially when metal components were close enough to heat up and melt into neighboring plastic and rubber. I saw this a lot with 12-inch GI Joe’s that had a combination of plastic, rubber and metal pieces. Today I'm a lot more mindful of climate control, but I’ve tried storing a few fodder-bin items in an unfinished attic space to see what would happen. I haven't seen a whole lot of damage to plastic or cardboard from extreme temperatures in a long time. I live in a more temperate region now, and take very good care of all my stuff in general, plus toy quality has changed a lot since the 60s and 70s, so maybe temperature extremes are just not as much of a concern as they used to be. I still keep a close eye on it, and have asked the question multiple times on different websites and Facebook groups. It seems like most collectors these days don't tend to worry too much about it... storing items in attics, garages, workshops, storage units, etc. without any climate control. Personally, I worry most about cold weather making the plastic (especially on smaller, more delicate figures and pieces) hard, brittle and easier to break. In fact, I tend to use a hair dryer in the winter to warm things up (especially figures I receive in the mail on a cold day) before trying to manipulate them in any way.