The Polaroid Model 20 "Swinger" was a popular

Land Camera The Land Camera is a model of self-developing film camera manufactured by Polaroid between 1948 and 1983. It is named after their inventor, the American scientist Edwin Land, who developed a process for self-developing photography between 194 ...

produced by the

Polaroid Corporation Polaroid is an American company best known for its instant film and cameras. The company was founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land, to exploit the use of its Polaroid polarizing polymer. Land ran the company until 1981. Its peak employment was 21,0 ...

between July 1965 and 1970. At $19.95 () and weighing only 21 ounces, it was the first truly inexpensive

instant camera An instant camera is a camera which uses self-developing film to create a chemically developed print shortly after taking the picture. Polaroid Corporation pioneered (and patented) consumer-friendly instant cameras and film, and were follow ...

, a fact that helped fuel its enormous popularity and made it one of the top-selling cameras of all time. The Swinger was especially successful in the youth market due to its low price, stylish appearance, catchy ''Meet the Swinger''

jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...

, as well as getting the camera into drugstores. In fact, it was so successful that it became Polaroid's best selling product at the time, and increased their share in the new camera market.

History

The camera was designed by

Henry Dreyfuss Henry Dreyfuss (March 2, 1904 – October 5, 1972) was an American industrial design pioneer. Dreyfuss is known for designing some of the most iconic devices found in American homes and offices throughout the twentieth century, including the We ...

. One source for the name claims that when copywriter Phyllis Robinson of

Doyle Dane Bernbach DDB Worldwide Communications Group LLC, known internationally as DDB, is a worldwide marketing communications network. It is owned by Omnicom Group, one of the world's largest advertising holding companies. The international advertising networks ...

watched

Edwin H. Land Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an Russian-American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, ...

walk into her office swinging the camera from his wrist, she decided on the name "Swinger". The Swinger featured an extinction exposure meter tied to the aperture which displayed the word "YES" in a window below the

viewfinder In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and, in many cases, to focus the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main ...

when the exposure was set correctly. Earlier models also displayed the word "NO" when not properly adjusted, while later units used only the YES indicator. The Swinger also included a built-in flashgun for AG-1 flashbulb and a single element lens. The Swinger used Polaroid's 20-Series

roll film Roll film or rollfilm is any type of spool-wound photographic film protected from white light exposure by a paper backing. The term originated in contrast to sheet film. Confusingly, roll film was originally often referred to as "cartridge" film be ...

, which was the first Polaroid roll film to develop outside the camera. The Swinger only used black and white film that kept its price low originally at $1.99 (equivalent to US$16.40 in 2020), but each roll produced small 2½" × 3¼" wallet size prints that were little more than half the 3 1/4" x 4 1/4" size of 40-Series Land Picture Rolls. By 1970, sales went down because young people did not like the quality of the photos, and those who did buy the camera used two rolls of film on average. Variants included the Model M-15 "Swinger Sentinel" (the Swinger II in non-US markets), which was a cheaper Swinger without the built-in flash, and the Model 3000 "Big Swinger", which used 100-Series pack film instead of the old-style picture rolls. The Swinger name was also used on several international-market Polaroid cameras in the 1960s and 1970s.

Song

The song of the commercial ''Meet the Swinger'' was sung by

Barry Manilow Barry Manilow (born Barry Alan Pincus; June 17, 1943) is an American singer and songwriter with a career that spans seven decades. His hit recordings include " Could It Be Magic", " Somewhere Down the Road", " Mandy", " I Write the Songs", " C ...

and a female chorus with the music written by Mitch Leigh and the lyrics that used the instructions of how to take photographs with the camera and also revealed the price were written by Phyllis Robinson. Two commercials were released at the time, both featuring Ali MacGraw as one of four young people going to the beach or on a picnic on bicycles then photographing the day's fun as a record of their memories.

Footnotes

External links

*
Vintage "Meet The Swinger" TV spot
{{Polaroid Polaroid cameras Instant cameras Products introduced in 1965