Boil and pop

That's the first I've heard of that happening, though I really don't frequent any groups or communities outside of Figure Realm, and I haven't used the boil and pop method since doing my first handful of figures, prefering to heat parts with a hair dryer, but, last I checked, those figures I boiled are still fine after seven years. It may be possible with REPEATED boilings of the same parts over an extended period of time, but how often is that going to happen unless you're an obsessive continually updating and revising the same figure? It could also be the case with knock offs using lower quality paints and plastics, and, fact is, plastics will degrade and become brittle with age and surrounding environmental conditions (whether they are displayed in routine direct sun or UV light, exposure to various chemical fumes, etc.), some sooner than others. That line about "changes plastic on a molecular level" almost sounds like some of the anti-vaccine conspiracy nonsense floating around and just makes me think someone saw a random YouTube video and now believes they're an expert on molecular chemistry. Anyway, personally, I wouldn't worry about it too much if all you're doing is boiling a figure a couple of times to disassemble it, swap out parts, sculpt and/or paint, then put it back together, I don't think that's going to cause the plastic to disintegrate that much faster than it would over time never being heated.

Thanks man, yeah it definitely sounds like a conspiracy theory or something haha! I did think as I was reading that forum post “why is boil and pop so popular then if it’s “damaging/changing plastic on a molecular level” if it did anything of the sort no one would be using it, I think most collectors are pretty precious about their figures, I know I am, so no one would be doing it in that case! But glad to hear you’ve had no problems with the figures you did it to, I got a bit paranoid about the ones I did it to after I read that theory!