Little Known Things About Flamingo Yard Ornaments

The plastic flamingo lawn ornament (in my opinion) is the original tacky lawn decor. It has been the mascot of tacky decor for years. I love it.

The pink flamingo lawn ornament was originally designed by Don Featherstone
in 1957 while working for Union Products. It actually won him the lg Nobel Prize for art in 1996.

The plastic lawn flamingo spawned a lawn greeting industry where flocks of pink flamingos are installed on a victim's lawn in the dark of night.

Production of pink flamingos was stopped on November 1, 2006. However, HMC International LLC, a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation, purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos in 2007.

Relying on photos of flamingos found in an old issue of National Geographic, Featherstone sculpted the pink flamingo. He sculpted his flamingo model from clay. Then from those models, his peers at Union constructed aluminum molds. The final product was made from polyethylenes and colored to match the birds in a way that was probably never imagined by mother nature.

America loved the lawn ornament and millions were sold. Your landscaping was not complete without your strategically placed flamingos!

Featherstone never received any royalties for his creation. But he did become a vice president of Union Plastics. In 1987, he was honored when the company started embossing its flamingos with his signature. "I'm getting my name pressed into the rump of every flamingo that goes out that door," he announced proudly.

By the 1970s, lawn flamingos had gone out of vogue. But In 1983, the New York Times ran an article title "Where Did All Those (Plastic) Flamingos Go?"

Suddenly, lawn flamingos were flying again. 1985 was a record year, with 450,000 sold in the United States. Why the resurgence? Critics suggest a combination of nostalgia and the popularity of the television show "Miami Vice." "They are a must for the hottest new social events - 'Miami Vice' parties," reported a California newspaper in 1986.