This “He-Man” Lunchbox is a Muffler on a 1960s-era Aeronca Aircraft

I was not searching for “lunchbox,” “airplane,” or “He-Man” (believe it or not) when I stumbled upon this image and thought, “Is that a He-Man lunchbox on an engine?”

I had to know more.

So I clicked through to Paul Shaffner’s photostream and sure enough he has another photo (several actually) with the caption,

One of my favorite mods…an old Aeronca had a modified old metal He-Man lunchbox which formed some sort of muffler…

The plane itself is a beauty too:

I’m both astonished and confused – I still had to know more! I found some more images of the airplane, including some in motion/flight, taken at the same Summer 2012 event ‘A Sentimental Journey’ in Pennsylvania:

The aircraft’s N-number N919Z appears to go by Warmkessel Korn’s Caper (The Yellow Rat) – this is the same aircraft discussed by Thomas Huf on pages 77-94 in Tales of Timeless Wings! (Sadly, upon further research it is recorded that Thomas and his wife Elaine passed away the year after the A Sentimental Journey images above were taken, their Cessna T-50 having crashed during a thunderstorm.) The plane – and its 140hp Lycoming 0-290 Series engine – has a new owner and I hope to see it someday in the field because I’m really curious about that lunchbox muffler, is it still there? Is it still working? How well does it work?

But yes it is totally possible to retrofit a lunchbox onto the engine of a flying machine!