Source: Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader, pg. 58
"The Flamingo Boom
During the 1920's, Florida was the hottest vacation spot in the United
States. Tens of thousands of real estate speculators and tourists swarmed to the
semitropical state...and many brought home souvenirs bearing pictures of
a bizarre pink bird that lived there - the flamingo.
In the north, these items - proof that the owners were rich enough to
travel to exotic places - became status symbols. Everyone wanted them. So
manufacturers started incorporating flamingos into a variety of new product
designs.
They were so popular that by the 1950s, the image of a flamingo was
asmuch a part of the middle-class America as Wonder Bread or poodles.
The Lawn Flamingo
In 1952, the Union Plastics Company of Massachusettes introduced the
first flamingo lawn ornament. It was "flat and unappealing."
To boost sales, the company decided to offer a more lifelike, three-dimensional
flamingo. But the second generation of lawn flamingos "was made of construction
foam and fell apart rather quickly," recalls a company executive. "Dogs
loved to chew it up."
Finally, in 1956, Union Plastics hired a 21-year-old art student named
Don Featherstone to sculpt a new lawn flamingo. "I got a bunch of nature
books and started studying them," says Featherstone. "Finally, I sculpted one, I must
say it was a beautiful looking thing."
The first atomic-pink molded plastic lawn flamingo went on sale in
1957. It was an immediate success; in the next decade, Americans bought
millions of them. But by the 1970s, lawn flamingos were "gathering dust on
the hardware store shelves along with other out-of-date lawn ornaments
such as the scorned sleeping Mexican peasant and the black jockey." In 1983,
the New York Times ran an article title "Where Did All Those (Plastic)
Flamingos Go?"
Then 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.
Featherstone never got any royalties for his creation. But he did
become a vice president of Union Plastics... and 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
dorr," he announced proudly.
Flamingo: The Bird
History: Flamingos, looking pretty much as they do today, were roaming
the earth 47 million years before humans came along.
They were well known in Egypt during the pyramid-and-sphinx period.
A flamingo plays a prominent role in Aristophanes' 414 B.C. play
The Birds.
The American flamingo is extinct in the wild - captive flocks (most
with wings clipped so they don't fly away) at zoos and bird sanctuaries
are the only ones left.
Body: Flamingos' knees don't really bend backward. But their legs are
so long that the joint where you see the knee is actually the flamingo's
ankle, and it bends the same way yours does. The knee is hidden, high
up inside the body.
The flamingo is the only bird that eats with its head upside down - even
while it is standing up.
Color: While flamingos are known to eat small fish, shrimp and snails,
they are primarily vegetarians. They consume vast quantities of algae, and
this is what makes them pink. Without the "food coloring," flamingos are
actually white.
Flamingos in captivity are, as a result of algae deprivation, quite a
bit paler than their wild cousins. Zoos attempt to keep their flamingo
stocks in the pink by feeding them carotene to compensate for the algae
they'd get in their natural habitats."
