Ah, yes! Alongside the white heat of technological advancement, let's have the white heat of atomic annihilation! Originally a Thomas Toys hit in the late 1940's USA, Poplar Plastics carried it over here, maybe in the early 1950's.
No real/specific scale, but maybe around 1:144th?
Sitting somewhere between a
B29 (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)/
B50 Superfortresses, and the
C97 Stratofreighter (the bulge and fold-line down the fuselage), it's not really any of them, and is a typical dime-store approximation! Mine has probably lost a bunch of stickers/water-slide transfers, but it was still an awesome find, at the last Sandown Park toy fair.
The
Thomas versions are shown as having a central nose wheel in the same yellow plastic as the other small parts, so mine may have a replacement pair from something else, but it seems to have age and fit nicely, so it could be an updated feature of the
Poplar version?
I'm missing a bomb, and I know I don't have one anywhere in the various spares stashes, so I'll have to look out for one, luckily it's quite distinctive, about 3cm, and ringed/winged like a dart-board dart, without the point. Pressing the plunger on the upper fuselage, opens the brass doors, and the 'all metal' bomb drops out, it's not sophisticated!
In the US there seem to have been two retail versions,, the plane and bomb, in a box, the box doubling as a target with various military objects to try and hit, printed on the lid. The other is a much more expensive affair, with an exploding battle ship in alternate blue/yellow deck/hull, with red turrets and superstructure parts to fly off! I don't know what
Poplar issued, but after finding that submarine and rocket set, earlier this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if they offered both configurations over here.
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