Plastic flamingo

Union Products The American artist Don Featherstone designed the pink lawn flamingo in 1957, naming the first Diego. His lawn flamingo, mass-produced by his employer, Union Products, of Leominster, Massachusetts, has since become an icon of pop culture that won him the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996. It has even spawned a spoof lawn greeting industry that installs flocks of pink flamingos on a victim's lawn in the dark of night. After the release of John Waters's 1972 movie Pink Flamingos, plastic flamingos came to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch. Union Products stopped production of pink flamingos on November 1, 2006. HMC International LLC HMC International LLC, a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation, purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos in 2007. HMC sub-contracted production of the flamingos to Cado Manufacturing, Inc., a blow-molder located in Leominster, Massachusetts, who specialized in this type of production. In 2010, Cado Manufacturing purchased the copyrights and the entire Union Products product line, including the pink flamingo, from HMC. == In culture ==

In the media and fiction, plastic flamingos are often used as a symbol of kitsch, bad taste and cheapness. The movie Pink Flamingos is named after them and helped them become an icon of trash and kitsch. In 2009, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, Common Council designated the plastic flamingo as the city's official bird. The city's soccer club, Forward Madison FC, uses the plastic flamingo on its logo. Some homeowners associations forbid the installation of plastic flamingos and similar lawn ornaments, and will fine offending owners, on the basis that such decorations lower the neighborhood's real estate values. In 2024, as a political statement, some homeowners painted their pink plastic flamingoes blue, to indicate support for Harris-Walz over Trump-Vance in the presidential election. This was reported mainly in retirement communities in the southern US, where neighborhood associations often forbid the posting of political lawn signs. ==See also==