De plane! De plane!
"De plane! De plane!", or "The plane! The plane!", is a catchphrase originating from the opening titles of every episode of the U.S. TV series Fantasy Island. Each episode began with the diminutive Tattoo, one of the main characters, spotting the seaplane approaching the island and running up a tower and excitedly yelling, "De Plane! De Plane!" and ringing a bell.
The aircraft
The aircraft used in the series was a SCAN 30, a license-built version of a Grumman G-44 Widgeon seaplane, U.S. registry N4453. It was manufactured by the in La Rochelle, France, in 1951, but had no engines because of unsatisfactory results achieved on previous SCAN Type 30 Widgeons with engines available there. Instead, it was disassembled and stored until 1967, when it was imported into the US, reassembled, and finally completed using nine-cylinder, 300 hp Lycoming model R-680 radial engines in what was called a Mansdorf Gannet conversion. It was one of the few Widgeons converted with radial engines.The plane belonged to author Richard Bach, which he mentions briefly in his book The Bridge Across Forever.
It was rented for the show from a local charter company by a contract production company, and almost all of the footage of the plane used throughout the series and films was shot in one day and recycled over the entire run. During the filming of the actual episodes, the guests climbed out of a papier-mâché and plywood mock-up of the back of the plane.
The aircraft was later rented or sold to parties who used it to smuggle drugs into the United States, and it crashed in a swamp on at least one occasion. It was confiscated by the DEA and sold by the U.S. Marshals Service at auction. It again fell into the hands of other drug smugglers and was eventually confiscated and sold again. It had a gear-collapse accident in the 1990s, and was repainted deep red, so it is not as recognizable as De Plane of the television series when it was painted white. It was owned by the Ozarks Auto Show, Inc., a regional antique dealer, of Hollister, Missouri, and was stored in a hangar at the M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport near Branson, Missouri, along with several other special-interest aircraft. De Plane! has at times been on display on the airshow circuit in the American Midwest. The plane was sold at the 38th annual Branson Collector Car Auction on April 16, 2016, to an undisclosed buyer for $275,000.
Cultural references
In 1992, Hervé Villechaize referenced his famous catchphrase in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial for minisize doughnuts, where he requested, "De plain! De plain! No, de cinnamon! De cinnamon! No, de chocolate! De chocolate!"The phrase is also commonly used in many other contexts, such as articles about dwarfs and aircraft.
Speedy Gonzales shouts the catchphrase in the opening of Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island, and again later. The animated film is itself a general parody of the television series.
In Two Broke Girls, the main character, Max Black, gets her boss, Han Lee, to say, "The plain! The plain!" when she purposely named all the different types of bagels they had to offer at the diner.
In the 2012 comedy Thats's My Boy, Todd, played by Andy Samberg, reveals an embarrassing back tattoo of the New Kids on the Block to which Donny Berger, played by Adam Sandler, responds by revealing Tattoo, the plane, and the catchphrase inked on his back.
In 2025, South Park portrays JD Vance as Tattoo saying the phrase.