Union Products, the company that has been making plastic Pink Flamingos as lawn ornaments since 1957, stopped production of the kitsch icon a few months ago, and is closing its doors today. This was a year before the Flamingo's 50th Birthday.
The pink flamingo has gone from a piece of the Florida boom and Florida exotica to being a symbol of trash culture to now becoming a combination of all we know — kitsch, history, simplicity and elegance.
Created in 1957 by Don Featherstone, who recently published a book called The Original Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass, was getting a commemorative 50th Anniversary Gold Plastic Edition ready for 2007, which would have been the culmination of kitsch, and possibly its complete sublimation into something past that.
Rest In Peace, Plastic Pink Flamingos, 1957 - 2006
[via Florida Sun Sentinel]
