I read a bunch of posts about mylar removal and have tried the heat gun, freezing, and the goo gone/razor blade method, but none of them are working very well. The freezing seems to be the worst as it has removed chunks of the base paint. When I use heat, the mylar(?) melts and shrinks and hardens before the glue softens. The goo gone kind of works, but it's taking super long. I plan on repainting a significant portion of the playfield due to the damaged paint from previous owners plus the stuff I've pulled up. Any other suggestions to speed up the process but limit the damage? It took me over an hour to do a 9"x9" area badly. Does that sound about right? This is my first restoration, and I've chosen a really rough pin to do, but it is Space Mission and in the end should be worth it . Any tips or advice will be appreciated. Money is an object, so I'm trying to use more sweat equity than throwing money at it.

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I was hoping to remove all the tape/mylar because there are little pieces of it all over instead of one big piece, so it looks patchy and it's causing ball wear around the edges. Plus some of the covered areas need repainted because they're over already worn areas. I know I'll have to repaint a lot, but I definitely don't want to trash the playfield. As I mentioned, I'm trying to do it as inexpensively as possible but still trying to get it to look as good as I can. I'm decent with paint and don't mind that part of the work. I just need a faster way to remove the tape/mylar.

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I think that it may have been mylar, but I finally figured out that if I hit it with the heat gun for 5-10 seconds, it was enough to soften the adhesive and pull a little bit up at a time without causing the mylar to shrink and become brittle . I still lost a little paint on some of the very bad parts, but it came up much easier and took off much less paint than my first attempts.