• An old butter/margarine tub with lid
• A bottle of Pine Sol
• A new toothbrush
• A bar of soap
• An old sealable container (a 20 oz. pepsi/coke bottle)

• Place the figures in the tub
• Fill the tub with Pine Sol until all the figs are completely under
• let them soak for about an hour to an hour & a half (at this point the paint should be kind of loose or gooey
• Take a fig out and rinse it with cold water
• Get the toothbrush wet and scrub it on the bar of soap
• Scrub the hell out of the fig while rinsing the paint scum away
• Rinse and dry the newly scrubbed figs
• While the paint is still gooey (it is fairly important that you don't let the paint dry because it will become even harder to remove) use the top edge of an x-acto knife (i.e. the flat dull edge of the blade) to scrape/pry out the paint

Also, you shouldn't have to worry about over exposing your hands to the Pine Sol. You're only in contact for a couple of seconds and you're washing off anyway. I mention this because I used to scrub the paint off while holding the fig in the Pine Sol. Needless to say, I lost layers and chunks of skin to over exposure.

If you are stripping large quantities of figs or don't have the time to finish picking/scraping out the paint and you don't want to just toss them back into the Pine Sol (for fear of eating throught the shine as mentioned above, or better yet, letting the paint re-dry), fill a large plastic cup w/water and add a table spoon of Pine Sol & dump the figs. The paint will stay in its semi-gooey state until removed.

When you're done, you will have a tub full of Pine Sol with a layer of paint chips and goo at the bottom. Get a funnel, a paper towel and some masking tape. Tape a couple of layers of paper towel to the inside of the funnel and a layer around the outside of the spout. Put the funnel in the Coke bottle and pour the used Pine Sol. This will allow you to store it for re-use without "contaminating" the original Pine Sol bottle.