Good golly, Miss Molly!
I’ve been replacing the towel racks in our bathroom. Riveting, I know. But in case there’s a similar job gathering dust on your to-do list, I thought I’d spare you the pain and suffering that ensued when I attempted to remove hollow anchors (a.k.a. Molly bolts) from the wall with no idea how to do so. My advice? Learn from my mistakes and consult Reader’s Digest’s handy step-by-step guide for molly bolt removal before you start.
Molly anchors (pictured here) 
are used to mount heavy items on drywall when studs are not in a convenient spot. Unless your towels are made of lead, you need only use light-duty plastic anchors for a job like this, so we were surprised to find these metal ones hiding behind the old fixtures. 
The problem with removing molly bolts or toggle bolts is that they are specifically engineered to resist being removed. They have a mechanism that expands behind the wall—making them utterly intractable. Not sure what you’re dealing with? Check out this handy visual reference guide to anchors and toggle bolts.
Instead of researching how to extract such an anchor, I went at it with a putty knife and a rubber mallet, chipping off a considerable amount of drywall in the process. When that failed, I used a screw driver to force the whole bolt through the wall, leaving a lunar crater that I’ll now have to fill in. (Pictured here, in its full glory).
Turns out the proper way to pull out a hollow anchor is to pull off it’s “collar”—the part that’s flush with the wall—with needle-nose pliers, use a screw driver or nail set to gently push the anchor’s body deeper into the wall, then spackle over it.
However, if you want to hang something using the exact same holes, you can do as I did and tap the entire anchor through the wall, then use a large toggle bolt to span the now gaping opening. Or, according to this handyman guide, “you could be daring and try to drill the molly out.”
Be careful out there.
