I was recently listening to an interview with writer and historian Jennifer Price, and I was interested to hear her say that the current ratio in the U.S. for lawn ornament flamingos to real ones is 700 to 1. 
Even so, the word is out that the lawn counterpart of our pink friend is now extinct…At least in its original glory: the Union Products Leominster, MA factory (they made urns & bird baths, too) manufacturing them shut down in November of last year. Ms. Price has penned a poignant eulogy here. Their coy (yet still screaming) likenesses dominated lawns in the latter half of the 20th century. They debuted in 1957, the magnum opus of a young designer named Don Featherstone, who lovingly lined up 500 members of his empire for a 40th anniversary celebration here.
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Pretty sure they are made still, there were a bunch put on a lawn as a promotion for an Internet provider here, I took a look at them and they said Made in China on the bottom.
posted by Donovan on 4-19-2007 at 8:17 pm
Latter half of the 21st century??
I have seen the future and it is overrun by plastic flamingos!!
posted by Ben on 4-19-2007 at 11:08 pm
I tried to get PETA’s official view on lawn flamingos. They never returned my email.
posted by Bill T. on 4-20-2007 at 6:35 am
Yeah, I agree with Donoavan… The company that *originally* made them may have shut down, but there are zillions of imported knockoffs out there. I’m not sure what kind of intellectual property protection they had for their product, but it’s tough to stop the Red Chinese from stealing anything.
Unless white trash suddenly become extinct, there is still a VAST market for these babies. The pink flamingo lives on!
posted by Sid on 4-20-2007 at 6:48 am
I do not consider myself trash, but I love those wacky, pink birds.
posted by laina on 4-20-2007 at 8:26 am
My flamingos are named Christopher and Gregory and I love them.
posted by N on 4-20-2007 at 1:58 pm
My high school orchestra has this fundraiser where, in the dead of the night, the students go out and place about 20 plastic flamingos on the lawn of a business. The businesses then pay us to remove them. It’s a great idea, I think.
posted by Pointy-Hatted Geek on 4-20-2007 at 5:59 pm
There’s a family that dresses up the little guys to match the time of the year, such as at the beginning of football season, they put tiny helmets on them and lined them up in the kickoff formation. It makes for a fun drive to see what they do next.
posted by heather on 4-20-2007 at 11:00 pm