RIP: Plastic pink lawn flamingos go way of dodo

[DoYouEverWonder]

Oct 28, 2006

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- The pink plastic flamingo, a Florida-inspired icon that has been reviled as kitschy bad taste and revered as retro cool, is dead at age 49.

The pop culture symbol met its demise after its manufacturer, Union Products, of Leominster, Mass., was socked with a triple economic threat - increases in costs of electricity and plastic resin combined with loss of financing.

Production ended in June, and the plant is scheduled to close Nov. 1, according to president and CEO Dennis Plante. Union Products made 250,000 of its patented plastic pink flamingos a year in addition to other garden products.

Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, paid tribute to the infamous bird that has been immortalized everywhere - from the John Waters' movie "Pink Flamingos," to bachelor parties and lawns across America.

"Let's face it," he said. "As iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy, campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_PINK_FLAMINGO...

[wakeme2008]

1. NO NO NO not the pink plastic flamingo they have to

live ON....

[qnr]

27. Well, they do, in dollar store knockoffs made in the far east n/t

[tblue]

2. I just don't know how I'll cope!

[murielm99]

3. Now the damn things

are going to pollute e-bay and sell for a small fortune!

[izzie]

4. My God hard to think it. I guess I will have to get a butterfly for

my door way. I will not live in fear yet as I am sure yard toys are here to stay and I still do see Pinks around. I think it is more an East Coast thing. I saw few of this when I was on the West Coast.

[Jamastiene]

6. They make wonderful colored globes now and

there are still those huge plastic sunflowers you see at yard sales and in dollar stores. Tacky will always exist, even if we have to make it happen ourselves. I love what others see as tacky.

R.I.P. pink flamingos. Maybe I will name my next band punk flamingos in memory.

[sarge43]

8. Amen

I hope the Smithsonian has one; it is Americana.

Tacky is the bird whirligig and the cutouts of the bentover woman and little boy peeing.

[Boomer]

10. Ah yes, Victorian gazing globes

Those wonderful deeply hued metallic orbs!

I HAD to have one in my back yard. There's just something so delicious about an item that was once considered the epitome of Victorian middle class status and that has been reduced to ridicule.

Good reminder of how fleeting and arbitrary is the entire concept of "taste." Literally and figuratively, when you consider that lobster used to be trash food that only the poor ate because they couldn't afford better seafood.

/tangent

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

26. My mom has had two of those things...Bears keep gazing into them

then smacking them. I don't think she's trying for #3. Nature is trying to warn us against the gazing globe.

[soup]

12. 'punk flamingos'

I like it. Fitting memorial.

personal note - We planted 2 of the critters in our front flower bed when we first moved down here 20 years ago. I embraced their tackiness, and bought them because nothing says Florida better than a tacky pink flamingo. They made me smile.

No more tacky pink flamingos? How can this be?

[DawgHouse]

15. I did the same thing when I moved here.

I am sad to see this happening. I wonder how many good people will lose jobs?

[soup]

17. After reading the article,

it really is sad.

>>The pop culture symbol met its demise after its manufacturer, Union Products, of Leominster, Mass., was socked with a triple economic threat - increases in costs of electricity and plastic resin combined with loss of financing.<<

Darn it.

Had a velvet Don Quixote a long, long time ago - bought in Juarez (whoa, blast from the past!), but never did have a velvet Elvis.

[Surya Gayatri]

5. A day of national mourning

is in order--flags at half mast.

Let's hope the real things don't go the same way because of climate changes in their habitat! SG

[Jamastiene]

7. Such a sad sight.

I just want to adopt them all and populate my yard with the last of the species. Is there an adoption program somewhere? I know I have enough room for a small flock in my front yard.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Goes to show what bad shape the Bush economy is really in

When we can't even afford to make our own pink flamingos.

So sad.

[Cobalt Violet]

11. This is a sad day.

I knew I should've stocked up while I could.

[wellstone dem]

13. I better get my two

out of my front yard, before they get stolen.

[Bucky]

25. These things go in cycles. This year Cobain outsold Elvis.

But 10 years from now, Cobain will be a micro niche market and Elvis will still be the King of (Dead) Rock'n'Roll.

Pink lawn flamingoes may suffer thru a couple of years of garden gnome resurgence, but there eternal values of our culture must and will endure.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. No way!

I love pink flamingos.

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Oh, I remember that picture. That's when the bird flu hit Florida.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

18. Funny story...

I read somewhere, years back, about a couple who had their pink flamingos stolen from the front yard where they had become a fixture of the neighborhood.

Some weeks later the couple began to receive postcards from exotic vacation spots around the globe - Rio, Paris, etc. - showing the flamingos posing in front of familiar sights and the typical message on the back: "Having a wonderful time, wish you were here!"

Turns out some friends had conspired to play a really unique and fun practical joke...

[mcscajun]

19. Now *that's* clever!

You have to wonder about the looks they got at the various customs areas around the world.

[The Backlash Cometh]

21. The same thing happened with someone's garden gnome.

[DoYouEverWonder]

23. There was a story about Plame Investigator Patrick Fitzgerald

who had a cat that his friends felt he was neglecting. They 'kidnapped' the cat and then took pictures of it in various locations around NYC, that they sent to him with ransom notes.

[Pab Sungenis]

29. As one of the people who did the original "roaming gnome" stunt

while in college in 1989, I can tell you it was not a garden gnome. It was a concrete sheep. And our exploits have been all blown out of proportion, distorted, and ripped off over the intervening decades.

I am proud to have started (or helped out with) at least two urban legends that I know of: the roaming gnome and the security camera puppet theater.

[mcscajun]

20. I'm sorry about the loss of jobs, but YAY! on the death of the pink

flamingo.



Now, about those velvet Elvises...

[helderheid]

22. get em while the gettin's good!

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A...

[kineneb]

24. alas

The local Interact (high school-level Rotary) club raised $800 doing "flamingo flocking" of Rotarian's yards. Damn, there goes another fund raising possibility.

http://www.getflocked.com /

And it was really fun, doing a midnight planting of a flock of plastic flamingos in someone's yard. They "landed" with an extortion note on how to make the things go away...



Guess I will have to order a set as a memento.

[Generic Other]

28. We Shall Overcome!!

[mzteris]

30. Baptist churches have been using them

as FUNDRAISERS....

Something about - you donate X number of dollars per flamingo to "FLOCK" a member of your congregation. The more flamingos in your yard, obviously the more popular you are in your church or some such.

My former fundie neighbors - the one who campaigned WITH Bush - had their yard flocked. I told my son to tell their sons he thought the flamingos were Just DIVINE.....



I wonder if they ever got it.