The story of the 'Zingers'

In the early 70's, MPC issued a line of kits called Zingers that were caricatures of cars(and a semi). Most of them consisted of a body that was sized and detailed to accurate scale with wheels/tires and an engine that were wildly out of scale to the body. The built kits were fairly small, about 4" long. After the Zingers came the Super Zingers, the same as Zingers in concept, but the overall scale was larger and there was a bit more detail. There were 2 Super Zingers issued.

It would appear that there were 2 issues of the Zinger kits. The first issue boxes had artwork of the kits and were issued in the early 70's (price- 1.25!!). The 2nd issue came out in the mid-70's, and had photos of the finished models on the boxes instead of the artwork.

There were also full sized versions of many of the Zingers built for the show car circuit in the early 70's as can be seen in the pic above. I have a 1972 ICAS Hot Rod Show World annual that has a full color spread of 6 different full size Zingers, and are they awesome! The bodies are about 1/2 the size of an actual vehicle, but the engines, wheels and tires are actual drag racing components. The overall engine to body ratio is the same as the models. I don't think any of them actually ran, but hey, they're cool!