The Taiyo P51 Mustang (officially the Taiyo North American P-51D Mustang) was a small 'toy' RC aircraft manufactured by Taiyo (Japan), and released in both the Japanese market, and western markets worldwide. Recommended for intermediate flyers, it has a body made of EPO foam, is small in size, and had modern battery technology for 2004. Coupled with a digital radio, the Taiyo Mustang was well ahead of it's time, and strikingly similar to model RC aircraft released 20 years later.
Features and Performance
With relatively modern NiMh battery powering the aircraft itself in its small 1/22 EPO body, the Taiyo Mustang would have flew and performed like any similar modern toy airplane.
Recharging the plane was undertaken by connecting the controller and its 8xAA (Alkaline) batteries to the aircrafts small 4.8V NiMh battery. We would not expect fast acceleration given the low voltage, but this is a good thing in a small toy plane, especially for park flying and gliding.
Once it's in the air however, speed can be obtained by gaining altitude and diving, and as you'll see from the YouTube video (below) it can go quite fast if you wish and is much more stable than we'd have expected for a small toy plane as it is.
Even more surprising for 2004, the Japanese packaging on the plane speaks of some kind of automation though we're not certain what exactly. Gyros and other automation is common in modern toy planes to help beginners maintain stable flight, but would have been extremely uncommon in the early 2000s. If any Japanese speakers are reading this, if you're able to decipher any of the packaging which might detail exactly what type of automation, we'd very much appreciate your comments below!
Recommendation
Obviously this is not a Tyco / Taiyo RC car, and so may not appeal to the usual readers of our site unless they're interested in model aircraft.
But for me, Taiyo's releases of various RC aircraft to try and broaden their market is fascinating, and some of the products they produced were well ahead of their time, or straight up unusual for such a toy company to take (eg. nitro powered cars and aircraft we'll review in the future!)
Eitherway I hope the products that remain and are available on eBay do find a home with a collector who cherishes them for what they are, and what they represent - early 2000s hope for the future, sadly knowing what we do about what would ultimately occur to the company just a few years later.
