Flamingos Bring Out a Friend’s True Colors
When I lived in San Francisco a few years ago, I had a neighbor who kept a pair of plastic pink lawn flamingos in a large indoor planter box. They weren’t just pink, but an audible, jangling, sizzling, screaming sort of ferocious nuclear meltdown pink that radiated around the room like a carbon arc beam, and my neighbor loved them with a deep, abiding love.
They invariably inspired comment. Guests would arrive and immediately reel back out into the hallway, not quite ready to believe what they were seeing. The things might as well have been pink elephants. The last time any of them had seen plastic lawn flamingos (never mind ones that shot shattering bolts of pink throughout the room) they had tripped over them in the neighbors’ yard on their way to watch Howdy Doody.
Nevertheless, there was something about them, a certain goofy genuineness, a blaring presence that announced that you were in the home of someone who would rather be buried neck deep in an anthill than, say, own a car phone.
They were infectious. Guests who had not been to my neighbor’s house before would invariably end up standing on one leg and doing flamingo imitations before the evening was through. And, just as invariably, they would want to know where they, too, could buy a pair. Four hours before, the idea of owning a pair of plastic pink lawn flamingos had about as good a chance of materializing in their minds as the thought of Dan Quayle in a bunny suit. But once the visitors saw them, and lived with them for a bit, they would embark on a holy quest for the things that made the Crusades look like a trip to the 7-Eleven.
So, right away, let me save you a bit of time and anguish. Perhaps the easiest way to acquire a pair of plastic pink lawn flamingos is to order them from a truly inspired outfit in Seattle called Archie McPhee and Co. It is a mail-order house and it sells, among other bits of esoterica, Groucho glasses, rubber chickens, plastic tiki lamps, Batman drinking mugs and Be-A-Spy kits. They also sell plastic pink lawn flamingos, each about 3 feet tall, for $9.50 a pair, plus $3 shipping.
Archie McPhee is at P.O. Box 30852, Seattle, Wash., 98103-0852. Or you can place an order by calling (206) 547-2467.
“They’ve had their ups and downs over the years, but for the most part they’ve been a real steady item,” said Brian Eklund, the office manager of McPhee’s wholesale division. “The main call for them is for housewarming presents. And a lot of people buy them around Christmastime. They’ll exchange them at office Christmas parties. They’re a real classic kind of tacky joke item.”
A joke to Eklund, perhaps, but they’ve been paying Don Featherstone’s freight since he designed the classic 3-D flamingo back in the ‘50s. Featherstone is the vice president of Union Products of Leominster, Mass., the manufacturer that introduced the lawn flamingo to the world in 1952.
That first flamingo model, said Featherstone, was plastic and flat and somewhat aesthetically unappealing when contrasted with the present incarnation. The second model was three-dimensional “but it was made of construction foam and fell apart rather quickly,” said Featherstone. “Dogs loved to chew it up.”
Finally, in 1957, Featherstone hit the mother lode. He sculpted a three-dimensional pink plastic flamingo that was artistic, durable and, for the most part, dog-proof. It is the model that Union Products continues to sell today, complete with Featherstone’s molded signature on the underside of each bird.
“It’s designer poor taste,” he said.
Although easily the most recognized of Union’s products--it specializes in plastic “lawn art”--the flamingo is not the company’s biggest seller, said Featherstone. Union’s original item, a plastic lawn duck, is still No. 1, followed by the plastic hen-and-chicks combo. The flamingo is third. The company sells about 250,000 pairs of them each year, said Featherstone.
Union also makes plastic squirrels, rabbits, cows--a total of 50 different plastic animals to strew around the lawn.
But, said Featherstone, the flamingo has a devoted cult following. There are several clubs and organizations around the country, he said, that “don’t really worship the flamingos, but they get together and have parties. In Virginia, there’s a group that has a parade and everybody dresses in pink. They’ve been doing it for 12 or 13 years.”
And in Connecticut, he said, there’s a group called the Society for the Preservation of the Pink Plastic Lawn Flamingo.
Admittedly, this sort of thing is not for everybody. People who own designer pets, for example, or those who only allow their kids to watch PBS, probably won’t appreciate the guaranteed double takes that will occur when passers-by notice the hot-pink waterfowl jutting from the bedding plants.
If, however, you long to own a couple of non-biodegradable pieces of true Americana, for cheap, signed by the designer himself and guaranteed to jazz up your landscape like a zoot suit jazzes up an inaugural ball, then part with a sawbuck or so and get the birds.
Then throw a party and take note of which guests try to stand on one leg. They’re the ones you invite back next time.
