Why is there blue stuff on my tyre lettering and how can I get rid of it?

When you purchase new tyres with white sidewall lettering, sometimes, though not always, the lettering is covered with a blue substance that looks pretty bad. This ‘blue stuff’ for lack of a better term is actually a waxy coating, which is there for the protection of the white stuff- (okay the white stuff does have a better word, or rather is a real explainable thing). 

The white letters despite appearing so- aren't actually painted, they are actually an un-tinted layer of rubber- This means they won’t simply wear off. 

Getting the blue off of the white is simple, just use warm soapy water, and a bit of steel wool or a scrubbing brush. Hot tip; Try to avoid this process while on concrete though, unless you want your driveway to resemble that of one in smurf village! The grass is your friend here. I am not sure if they even have driveways in the smurf village, or tyres for that matter but you can imagine if they did, right? Surely full of ‘blue stuff.’

Check out the video below for more-
At Tyre Review we know for most people the racy look of white sidewall lettering is a great cosmetic look, and so that blue stuff staining the white is nothing to fret about, blue stuff is easy to remove. And it is important to remember that it is there in the first place for good reason; protection in transit. 

It is also worth mentioning that most tyre fitters will actually have already done the cleaning process for you.

Transcript:

Oh hi, I guess you're probably wondering what I'm doing but also you're probably wondering why tyres sometimes come with this blue stuff on the white letters. 

The blue stuff is actually a soap stuff that they put on there to protect the white lettering in transport so it won't get damaged and look as good as it can look when you finally get the tyres on your car.

Now any good tyre fitter with soap will actually scrub it off for you like this but sometimes if you buy your tyres on the internet, they might leave it on there. So to get it off, all you need to do is get soapy water and a good little scrubber like this and that'll just take it straight off. Give that a bit of a hose down and it'll be like a brand new one.

That's how you take the blue stuff off of white lettering.