Peeling Avenue Pads?

At this past weekend's Retro Gaming Event at Evercon I noticed something about a couple of my Ave PC-E pads after some little kids were playing around on Kabuki Ittoryoudan and one of those little punks were a little overly rough....

Oh My GOARD!!!  O_O  

 

At first I thought, Hawly SHEETS!!  Did they tear the plastic covering off of my controllers!!?!?!?  Are they ruined?   

Then I looked a bit closer at the victimized pads and saw that what lies beneath the torn plastic seemed to be very clean/clear shiny plastic!!

Could this be some sort of protective coating that was put on nearly 20 years ago?  It finally decided to start to peel off today?  Has anyone else seen this with their Ave pads or other controllers?







Beautiful sparkly shiny Ave pad 3!!  It looks better than it ever has!


Was this to be pulled off on the day that they were purchased and I just didn't know because I no speak moon rune?  It was somewhat difficult to pull off, but it all came off and the controllers look better than they ever did...  They look BRAND NEW!!  (brand new, or just about to be destroyed because I tore off the protective plastic that was NOT TO BE REMOVED!!!!     )