Honk If You Love Plastic Pink Flamingos
Madison Wisconsin Names Pink Flamingo as Official Town Bird
America’s love affair with the plastic pink flamingo continues year after year. In 2009, Reuters reports that Madison Wisconsin has named the king of synthetic birds as the official bird of the capital city. The selection of the plastic bird pays tribute to a college prank where 1000 pink flamingos were placed outside the dean’s home at the University of Wisconsin in 1979. The memorable prank started a trend of flamingo flocking yards across the country.
No. Pink Flamingos are Not Southern.
Union Products of Leominster, Massachusetts began selling the plastic yard birds back in 1957. According to company officials per a phone conversation, UP sold about a quarter of a million pink flamingos per year with a total of over 2 million sales. Since it takes less than a minute to make one, it’s unlikely that the country will ever suffer a flamingo shortage.
The Man Behind the Plastic Bird – Don Featherstone
Don Featherstone is the genius behind the campy plastic flamingo. When he graduated from Worcester Art School in 1956, he didn’t set out to be the king of plastic fowl. In fact, he first was hired by a firm that designed church interiors.
The church job didn’t last very long, and Featherstone hired on at Union Products and began developing a styrene 3-D flamingo using photographs from an October 1957 article in National Geographic called “Ballerinas in Pink” for inspiration.
Previously, the company had been manufacturing flat foam birds with dowel legs. These birds didn’t hold up well, since “dogs ate them and they disintegrated quickly,” says Featherstone. Plus, “they didn’t show up unless you were looking straight on.”
Only the Original Pink Flamingo Will Do!
Featherstone added his signature to the pink flamingo when a Chicago competitor came out with a paler pink version of the Union Products bird. “That’s really the only change we made. Adding the signature, so you’ll know what you’re getting,” says Featherstone.
At one point, Featherstone did develop a deluxe model of the pink flamingo with yellow jointed legs. “More like real ones,” says Featherstone. “People didn’t buy them. I guess we raised a whole generation who think that flamingos actually have wire legs.”
So, it’s the original or nothing when it comes to the plastic pink flamingo. And, yes, pink flamingo fans do care. When Featherstone’s signature was removed for a short period of time, pink flamingo enthusiasts boycotted, and the signature was quickly added back to the line.
Why Are Pink Flamingos So Cool?
No one is sure why the plastic yard birds are so appealing, but pink flamingos have dotted the nation from coast to coast since the 1950s. The birds are even popular in Mexico and South America.
“I had no idea it would be famous,” says Featherstone. “It was just another job.”
But, it turned out to be quite a job for Featherstone. He and a group of partners went on to buy out the company from longtime owners George Progin and James Sullivan and reigned as the company president for a few years but retired in 2000.
Union Products closed in 2006, but HMC International LLC of New York purchased the moulds and continues to make and market the popular pink yard birds, so it’s not likely that pink flamingos will be on the endangered species list any time soon.
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Plastic Pink Flamingo
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