This will make Dyslexia cry; sob, even

The news has even spread to Canada
The sad news has even spread to Canada. The world is mourning with Dyslexia.---BBB

Boomers bemoan flamingo's final flight
Pink, plastic fowl on endangered list
Buyers sought to save iconic ornament
Oct. 21, 2006. 01:00 AM
by SURYA BHATTACHARYA, BUSINESS REPORTER
Toronto Star

Get ready to mourn the demise of a North American icon, the plastic pink flamingo.

The Massachusetts-based manufacturer of the kitschy lawn ornament, Union Products, announced this week that production had ended in June and the plant that made the wire-legged plastic waterfowl would close Nov. 1.

President and chief executive Dennis Plante told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that the company had struggled with rising energy and plastic-resin costs and was pushed into liquidation by a nervous lender.

Now Union Products, which also made other garden products, is looking for a buyer for its assets, including the plastic moulds used to produce the pink flamingo.

At least two American companies and one unidentified Canadian firm are interested, Plante told the Florida paper.Yesterday, the mayor of Leominster, Mass., where Union Plastics has its pink flamingo plant, told the Toronto Star there's hope the bird may live on despite the company's problems.

"There is a very strong plastics manufacturing industry here," said Mayor Dean Mazzarella, "so it's quite possible someone here may buy it."


"Maybe the source will change but this will be the birthplace," Mazzarella added. An estimated 20 million pink flamingos are believed to grace the lawns of homes across America since inventor Don Featherstone first created the waterfowl in 1957 from clay, based on a photo in National Geographic, and then made the plastic mould.

Featherstone's signature appears under the tails of authentic flamingos, which are only sold in pairs. Each bird has a yellow beak with a black tip.

Selling for $10 (U.S.) apiece, Union Products made 250,000 of its patented plastic pink flamingos last year, selling many of them to retail giant Wal-Mart.

In 1996, Featherstone was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Art for inventing the plastic pink flamingo. Organized by a science humour journal, the Ig Nobel Prize is a parody of the Nobel prizes, and is awarded in 10 categories for what "first makes people laugh, and then make them think.""Now the pink flamingo has become much more of a speciality nostalgia product than a major consumable," Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University in New York, told the Star.

After a successful run as a genuine lawn ornament in the 1960s, the plastic pink flamingo was already "kitschy" in the '70s.

"It was already associated with bad taste, but the kind of bad taste we embrace, a lovable bad taste," Thompson elaborated.

The pink flamingo reached iconic status in the 1980s through a wave of nostalgia among baby boomers. "As baby boomers slouched to their 50s, they created a market to recreate what they experienced in this childhood," he said.

Today's plastic bird no longer embodies setting up house in the suburbs; it has evolved into a more ironic statement.

With exceptions, of course.

Thompson says his neighbour proudly owns a flock of 15. They stand in various shades of pink, some fading, and she displays them "without an ounce of irony."

Then there's the bird's ability to turn up in unlikely places.

Mazzarella, who is as old as the bird, says he woke up on his 40th birthday to find a mysterious flock of 40 on his lawn.

BBB
Will this make all of the pink flamingo sellers on E-Bay millionaires?

BBB

Pink flamgeos are totally tacky, I would never have one in my yard.

Of course not ... a single one.

There was a guy in my neighborhood, who, during the Christmas season, had Santa and his sleigh, on his lawn, being pulled by pink flamingoes!

I need that, where did he get them?

The lady Diane will kill me but that's ok.

dys- He had them a few years ago. I think that you can get them here:

http://www.getflocked.com/

earlier this week saw a whole bunch on a lawn .
why would there be a shortage ? i thought they were just rented fow a day or two ?
can't they be made out of re-cycled plastic ? there seems to be plenty of that around .
perhaps the company just wants to create 'some exitement' ?
like : "shortage of pink flamingos coming , place your order right now by calling 1-888-...... , operators are standing by to take your order !
do not delay , this a limited time offer ! "
hbg

wonderful site, my order is in the works.

...GET YOUR PINK FLAMINGOES HERE !...

how about a "flamingo claus standard flag " - "meets military flag standards" - if that promise won't make you buy , nothing will .
hbg

hamburgler; I do have a limited budget.

Here's the lawn in front of a garden shop in town.

I hope you're sitting down dys.

chai, marry me?

BBB
As a house warming gift when Dys and Diane bought their home in ABQ, a mile from my home, I ordered a pink flamingo bird feeder for Dys. It was quite large, and Dys hung it from a tree branch in their front yard. The wind eventually destroyed it and we had a wake in it's memory.

I think Fred the Parrot thought it was his mother.

BBB

I can tell you there will be no shortage of pink flamingos - or any other color. I was at a nursery trade show back in July and there were at least 3 companies from China marketing various forms of them. They barely tweaked them to get around copyrights. You can buy little holiday outfits for them depending on the time of year and there are even ones that glow in the dark. I'm sure the reps from Walmart ordered plenty.

I have just sent dys an inflatable flamingo sex doll.

Gus


The Lady Diane is going to hate you, you doofus! She wants ALL of what Dys has to give!

BBB

I love those baby flamgos
they're what I love to eat,
I bit their little heads off
I nibble on their tiny feet.