Anytime someone says "Does anyony else have an old beater they can try it on" then I know this isn't a good idea. If it isn't something that can be done on a show car then it isn't a process that I will be trying on any other vehicle either.
There was someone who liked to experiment like this on Autopia some years back. He found that that ticky tack stuff that you stick to posters to hang them on your walls worked too. Here's the thing though... Automotive clay is designed to be safe on your paint. It pulls particles inside of it and helps keep them from scratching your car once you have picked them off the surface. Playdoh, on the other hand, is primarily made up of wheat, flour, water, and salt. I don't know about you, but I'm not dragging a compound with salt as the primary ingedient across my $5000 - $8000 paint job. Your paint is the most expensive part of your car. To replace it with a factory quality job can easily cost in that range. I don't spend countless hours and hundreds of dollars a year on my paint just so I can rub it off with a ball of salt dough, ya know? Besides, playdoh would never work well with lubrication. It would just fall apart and not pick anything up.
Automotive clay is already cheap enough. You can get a brick that will detail a dozen cars or more for less than $20 bucks. That clay is also not going to haze the crap out of your paint or stain it with the dyes they use in playdoh. I don't think it is worth it to take chances with your paint simply so you can save a couple dollars. Cutting corners is not what car care is about. This ranks up there with the guy that used bleach to get his white car whiter and then wondered why it was looking so milky. :lol: I can only imagine what your car would look like after you clayed it with a couple colors of Play Doh. :lmfao
