While the first claim straddles the realm of legend and history, the city’s economy is clearly dependent on plastics with plants set up by DuPont, Fosta-Tek and Nypro. Its history and identity is also heavily intertwined with that of the plastics industry as evidenced by the National Plastics Center and Museum.

Don Featherstone And The Modern Lawn Ornament

It is also here that Don Featherstone, father of the Featherstone Flamingo first designed the ubiquitous pink plastic lawn ornament for Union Products. This lawn ornament would take lawns and gardens worldwide by storm and inspire designers and decorators in other areas.

Featherstone created the three-dimensional flamingo prototype in clay using National Geographic photos as reference at his first job right out of art school. In this way, he revolutionized the future design of lawn ornaments, which until then had consisted of two-dimensional animals and birds.

He would go on to create a further 700 “character” ornaments for Union Products and rise in the firm, eventually retiring as its president in 2000. Featherstone currently lives in nearby Fitchburg, MA where he fondly maintains a flock of 57 flamingos to commemorate the year he designed the iconic decoration.

Featherstone’s success with the pink plastic flamingo was acknowledged when he won the 1996 Ig-Nobel Award, which is awarded to unusual and imaginative achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.

In 1999 he wrote the tongue-in-cheek coffee table book “Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass” with Tom Herzing, which presents over 100 photos and text submitted by pink plastic flamingo aficionados to commemorate the bird’s 40th anniversary in 1997.

Pink Plastic Flamingo Endures as Americana

The appearance of the pink plastic flamingo in 1957 could not have come at a better time as the 1950s saw the colour pink soar in popularity even as the USA was gripped by Florida fever. The pink plastic flamingo became a fun fad as suburbanites snapped up it up as a must-have decoration for their new lawns.

The 1970s saw a backlash against the wildly popular ornament, in part due to the trashy excesses in John Waters’ 1972 cult film, the transgressive horror-comedy “Pink Flamingos” which featured the late Divine as part of a dysfunctional family going to great lengths to defend their title of “filthiest people alive”.

The bird ascended phoenix-like in the 1980s riding on the popularity of the police drama Miami Vice, a television series about two vice squad officers battling drugs, prostitution and guns, and which featured a flock of flamingos in it’s opening credits.

Currently, the pink plastic flamingo attracts both supporters who love it for its retro cool as well as detractors who shudder at its crass tackiness.

However, we may be witnessing the Swan Song For (the) Pink Lawn Flamingo as Union Products has closed and there appears to be no one who will buy the moulds and continue production.

Will The REAL Featherstone Flamingo Please Stand Up

The original Featherstone Flamingo is formed of moulded plastic resin in a rich pink with two-tone black and yellow beaks and eyes. Each bird is 3 feet long and stands on spindly metal legs that are 21” high. They are usually sold in pairs of one feeding bird and one standing bird. The rarer flying flamingo with the revolving propeller wings is a later addition.

All Union Products flamingos have had Don Featherstone’s signature etched in plastic on the underside of their rear ends since 1986. For a few years around 2000, his signature was temporarily dropped until howls of protest managed to have it restored.

The Pink Flamingo As Design Icon

As the popularity of the pink plastic flamingo soared, it inspired cheap knockoffs even as it cemented the iconic status of the pink flamingo in popular design.

Love it or loathe it, the pink flamingo has become a mainstay of pop culture and décor. Currently, pink flamingos can be found decorating a wide range of everyday objects such as mugs, T-shirts, hats, signs, towels, mousepads, suncatchers and even decorative light switch plates and wedding cake toppers.

© Jennifer Yap