Upon discovering the laws of motion and gravity, Sir Isaac Newton famously uttered, “What goes up must come down,” but Playboy’s swanky revival of the original Big Bunny airplane is proving the English mathematician wrong. The aircraft went up, came down, and is actually going back up again quite soon. The Mansion in the Sky, as it was known 50 years ago among such passengers as Cher, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, LeRoy Neiman, Shel Silverstein, and Barbi Benton, took off in 1970 when Playboy founder Hugh Hefner bought the plane for $5.5 million, landed for the last time in 1975 when he sold the iconic black airliner to Aeromexico, and as of the end of November, is heading back into the sky.
The new Big Bunny, which is making quite a statement courtesy of its glossy black exterior stamped with the instantly recognizable rabbit head and original N950PB registration number on the tail, will fulfill its former duty transporting artists, influencers, and thought leaders around the world.
Though the simple yet sensual exterior of the original jet garnered quite a bit of attention—even from 35,000 feet in the air—the interiors, including the living room and its custom leather sofas and Hefner’s salon, were next-level. The new Big Bunny will pay homage to its predecessor with similarly stylish spaces, the creative conception of both Playboy’s in-house team and International Jet Interiors. Anna Ondaatje, vice president of global brand and franchise strategy at Playboy, says, “One of our primary influences was, naturally, the original 1970s Big Bunny jet—the rust-colored pop-up seat in crushed velvet was directly inspired by the orange leather seats of the O.G. Big Bunny that are so immediately recognizable.”
Photo: Jet Focus courtesy of Playboy