This is a Hubley #495 Navy Bomber. It is a generic design borrowing from many WWII American planes. The wings fold up, the wheels retract, the cockpit slides open. It's sturdy enough to survive many crash landings. It cost me $37, which is expensive for me but on the low end of the range for complete versions. The bomber debuted around 1956 with a silver & red paint scheme and lasted until the mid Seventies. By then it was brightly colored and was billed as a stunt plane because war toys were frowned upon. I think it made a brief comeback in the late Eighties, all in white with Pepsi logos as would be typical for a toy of that era. It was important to me that this plane had the same color scheme as my original toy. I probably wouldn't have been so strongly attracted otherwise. I would say my ownership fell into the 1963-1965 range. There was a casting modification while the plane bore this livery, and a hump was added at the top of the fuselage just behind the cowling, disguised as an air intake. It was there to correct a fault with the cowling falling off. I think the original non-humped models may be more desirable. I don't know which version I owned. I think it had the hump but also remember losing the cowling often and being extremely annoyed by that. I went no-hump. Being a fairly old man, that's what I'm accustomed to anyway.
This toy has many scrapes but the decals are intact and nothing is missing or broken. A repro canopy is $24 if you can find one and that's only the sliding part, not the windscreen and cockpit. I don't collect airplanes, nor Hubley, but it was a very memorable toy for me. I probably owned the original for less than a year but it's one of those things I can look at and remember a specific time and place that I was playing with it. On my way to the shop after finally deciding to buy, I contemplated giving it a repaint but I prefer my toys to be "lived in". For me, a perfect toy doesn't invoke any of the memories that are my reason for collecting. Perfect toys also discourage people from picking things up and rolling them across the table and I want my guests to get the same pleasure from my toys as I do. For the most part, I don't collect anything that I didn't once own either as a toy or a full size vehicle. I have never owned a 1:1 scale P-47 Hellcat Navy bomber.
