Problems with a 1996 Lava Lite and may simply GooKit it

Hey all,

this is my first post... I was waiting for membership confirmation for a few days and am happy to be on the board. I bought a Lava Lamp (Lava Lite) back in the 90's. Fast forward to now and my daughter saw a Lava Lamp in a store and got really excited. I told her I had one and would "dig it out". It had been sitting in storage for years so I expected it would need a few things. I knew it would at least need a light bulb. I added a 40w appliance bulb (old one had burned out last I had recalled and this was confirmed when I brought it out of storage). Well... now I think I am remembering why I forgot about the thing. I am not sure it ever really worked all that well. It has a 1996 date on the felt on the bottom and it has a date code of 1996 on the cap. It WAS a blue/white globe (confirmed with the 03 code) that has now gone clear (or perhaps yellowish or off-clear is a better term). In the first several runs, it would form lots of smallish balls that would mostly go to the top. I decided to try a 25W bulb. This resulted in a column effect... after several days of cycling, I noticed that there are bubbles in the goo... I switched back to a 40w bulb and it just looks pretty unimpressive. I also notice that the liquid level was about an inch below the black cap (that seems pretty low to me)... and may have always been this way (foggy memory!).

Anyway... while waiting to be confirmed to join the website, I read a lot here while waiting...

I also ordered a Goo Kit to renovate my Lava Lite. I cannot imagine it would be worse than how the lamp looks now. I am thinking of using some Krylon to paint the lamp base/cap white for my kids' room and doing purplish lava. Anyway... before I do all this, I wanted to post here to see what people think about my old lamp. I feel like there isn't much else I can do with it.

I am posting a couple photos as well as some video of how it looks after being on for a couple hours. It really only gets worse after more time.

Please let me know what you think. Definitely impressed by the Goo Kits I have seen posted here. I am looking for more lamps to recondition!

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