Love them or hate them, pink plastic flamingos will never go out of style. Some say they're a thing of the past. I say, they're wrong, pink flamingos are alive and well today, at age 48, and will be for many years ahead of us.

Massachusetts is where it all started. A line of products called "Plastics for the lawn" was made by Union Products. The original collection included two-dimensional frogs, ducks, dogs, and the ever popular plastic flamingo.

Don Featherstone was recruited to the company in 1965 as a designer. He was originally to redesign the popular "Plastics for the lawn" duck into a three-dimensional decoration, as opposed to the two-dimensional one they already had.

After spending five months working on this, he would then move on to his next project, which with time would be his most famous. He was using pictures of flamingos from a national geographic magazine, since he couldn't get his hands on any real flamingos to model from. The original was sculpted out of clay and was then used to make a plaster cast. The plastic cast was then used to form the molds for the plastic.

Featherstone's original design was to have wooden legs, but that would be too costly and was replaced with metal legs that you can still see today on the pink lawn flamingos. The date that the first pink flamingo was put out was never recorded but they know that it was sometime during 1957.

Today plastic flamingos are used for various purposes, such as wedding decorations, friendly little gifts, replacements for reindeer and similar things during Christmas time, or for simple old lawn beauty! The totally portable buddies can travel wherever you do.

Unfortunately, these flamingos are notorious with pranksters. On occasion, someone might pop by your house and steal that great outdoor friend of yours and kidnap it like it was a child. They might even hold them ransom, for reasons I am not sure of. As sad as it is, many places around the continent have banned these poor, pink creatures. So the company responsible for their distribution also made them in blue. Eventually, all of the flamingos were banned from particular areas.

Now-a-days, flamingos are becoming more appreciated. Their population covers a vast range, and now even some video games, such as "The Sims," proudly show them off. Although these decorations are neither loved nor hated, they are still considered a great work of art. The newly made flamingos are three-dimensional and some even light up! Look how far these critter have come in the past 50 years!

Yours in Whyville,
Dartanian + Digster02

Authors' note: If buying lawn flamingos, remember authentic ones come in pairs and always have Don Featherstone's signature.