Short Stuff: Plastic Pink Flamingos

Plastic flamingos started out as innocent yard art, transformed into folk art, and have become a (kind of mean) symbol of high campiness. There’s a lot to this particular plastic yard art.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's chalk, and this is short stuff, and we're talking
at long last about a topic that has been on
my list for short Stuffs since basically the first time
we came up with short Stuffs, which is pink plastic
lawn flamingos, one of the all time great pieces of
yard art anyone's ever come up with. Do you own them? No,

(00:28):
I'm not mean. Okay, you're not mean. Oh you'll you'll see.
I'll describe why I think owning a pink flamingo is
kind of mean. Interesting, all right, Okay, you're gonna do
that after the break. Is it going to be a
setup for a teaser? Yeah, maybe that will be a
set up. Let's tell them first about the origin of
these things. Everybody knows what we're talking about, right, Like
the plastic pink flamingos that people had on their lawns,

(00:51):
especially in the fifties and maybe the sixties. Um. Nowadays
they're super kitchy and campy. Um, but plastic lawn flamingos,
that's right. They were created by a man named Don Featherstone,
who was a sculptor who was hired by Union Products
from uh Leo, Minster Mass or however they pronounced it.

(01:12):
They're sure there's some strange pronunciation for that. And they
are the cap plastics capital of the world. And he
created the very first one as his second work assignment
in ninety seven. Yeah, Union Union Products had two d
um flamingos and they also had ducks, and his first
assignment was to turn the ducks from two D into

(01:33):
three D. And the ducks were the long, long time
biggest seller. It was called duck and ducklings, and people
would put plastic ducks like on their yard as if
they were just hanging out in their grass. Yeah, so
Featherstone created the flamingos. They cost about two seventy six
for two of them because you gotta Solomon pairs. I

(01:53):
think they're still sold in pairs. Yeah, you gotta have
a little buddy, you don't just have one. And that's
by the way, that's about day. Yeah. So it's a
pretty good deal today because they're what like fifteen or
sixteen bucks now. So apparently they came about because this
was the beginnings of sort of the cookie cutter subdivision revolution,

(02:14):
and you know, if you wanted to put something in
your yard and make yourself stand out from your neighbor.
Pink flamingo was a fine way to do so. Yeah,
and the pink flamingo was um was chosen to be
like the second one because that pink and everything Caribbean
was super in, like Tiki culture was kind of big
around that time, and it was a smash hit, Like
people started buying them by the boatloads. Um the moment

(02:40):
they hit the market, it just was perfectly time. It
was exactly what everybody was looking for. And they were
still you know, twenty five bucks isn't you know, free,
but they were. They were affordable but basically everybody who
could afford them, and so they became this kind of
emblem of suburban working class culture. Like that was a
certain group of popowle prized pink flamingo lawn ornaments and

(03:04):
put them on their yards. Non ironically, that's very important, right,
which is a very big reason why in the nineteen
sixties there was a backlash against them. Like so many
things in the nineteen fifties that mom and Dad loved,
the sixties came along and the hippie said, I'm done
with that. Screw your conformity. I'm not gonna play your games.

(03:26):
I'm counterculture baby, and those lawn gnomes and flamingos are terrible.
Get them out of here. But then, of course the
seventies roll back around and they're like, hey man, who
cares those things are cool, Let's bring them back. But
the reason that they were cool, and the whole reason
they came back, you can make a really strong case
is because of a single American director out of Baltimore,

(03:51):
Maryland named John Waters that here is basically single handedly
responsible for bringing back the pink Flamingo. But the key
differences that when he brought the Pink Flamingo back, he
brought it back and ran it through a completely different
paradigm so that it came out the other end totally schlocky,

(04:12):
totally campy, and lost every bit of earnestness and was
completely saddled with irony from that point on because he
created a movie in nineteen seventy two known Round the
World is one of the most offensive movies ever made
that he called pink flamingos. That's right, And uh, I
guess before we take that break to find out why

(04:34):
they're mean, why you feel they're mean, we should mention
that John Waters, who just called Roger Waters and did
a retake, I feel like I should point out uh
gay icon in the USA. And so as a result,
gay bars started using pink flamingos mascots and you could
find uh at drag shows. You could find them on

(04:56):
earrings of performers and on their high heels. Uh. And
then you know, it kind of became sort of this
uh a symbol for for gay America. In the seventies
in the United States, High High High Camp, High Camp.
All right, let's take a break. We will take that break. Yeah,
I think that's a good idea. All Right, We're gonna

(05:18):
follow up with a little bit more right after this.
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen up to Chuck Shoon. Okay. So when when John

(05:47):
Waters like breathed a second life into pink flamingos, pink
lawn flamingo ornaments, UM, when they came back, they were
they were brought back, like you said, uh, in the
gay community big time. But then they also kind of
spread out further and further into um, the larger community
in America, UH and became kind of part and parcel

(06:08):
with UM. Pranksterism like they were. They were frequently put
on people's lawn as prank basically like what person could
possibly want lawn pink lawn flamingos, Right, so if we
put them on somebody's law, and it's a hysterical prank
um but also in in some way, And I think
a lot of people didn't realize that they were necessarily

(06:28):
doing this, but it was part of the whole second
life of it was mocking the people who originally enjoyed
pink lawn flamingos earnestly and mocking their taste. And that
is why I think pink flamingos are kind of mean
these days. Oh so you think if you put a

(06:49):
flamingo up it's uh, sort of a hipster ironic making
fun of it kind of thing. Yeah, so do you remember,
you know, how mom jeans are back? Sure, I could
not find this article. I searched all over forth, but
I read this article, which is basically account of somebody
in the fashion industry who was there when mom jeans
were brought back, and they were brought back in this

(07:11):
really mean spirited way among like little twenty something wave
models who basically wanted to rub it in the faces
of moms, um how good they looked, even in their
frumpy mom jeans, and that's how mom jeans came back.
That to me is basically the same principle behind bringing
back the pink flamingos. It's it's it's the way that

(07:33):
John Waters put is that they become loaded objects, classics,
tools of the well to do, mocking the taste of
the less fortunate, and that he says that the real
plastic flamingo is in a sense extinct. You can't have
anything that innocent anymore. So I realized I'm being a
little high blown and high falutant about this whole thing,
But I just found it really fascinating that the idea

(07:54):
that it is has this certain level of mockery. That
you're mocking the taste of people who ever thought they
those things were neat and enjoyed them on there, you know,
at face value. Sure, and I think both of us
are kind of anti uh ironic, you know, flaunting ironically. Yeah,
at the same time though, sometimes we've just just gotta
mellow out. Well, that's true too. I mean we're not

(08:16):
upset about this or anything, right, Uh, are you mad? No? Okay,
I'm just kidding. It's all good. Uh So, a few
more things about the flamingos, though, a couple of neat things.
In nine, if you are familiar with Madison, Wisconsin and
the university there, they planted over a thousand of these

(08:36):
in the grass of in front of the dean's office.
And then many years later, I think they paid homage
to that. In two thousand nine, in honor of this
prank in the city town council named the pink Flamingo
the official bird of Madison. That's right. So the seventies
were huge for the pink Flamingo, but the eighties were
even huger. For the first time ever in the history

(08:59):
of Union pro ducks, I think in five, six or seven,
the pink Flamingo out sold the duck with ducklings um
lawn ornament. And some people say, well, it was just
it was the thirtieth anniversary of the pink Flamingo, so
it was getting more pressed and it had this revival.
Other people say, no, no, no, it had nothing to
do the thirtieth anniversary. It was the popularity of Miami

(09:20):
vice that brought pink flamingos back. But again brought them
back in this way that like people weren't really enjoying
them at face value. There was something kind of campy
or funny about having the pink flamingo in the front yard.
Well here at our zoo in Atlanta, that one of
the very first things that you see when you walk
in are the flamingos standing there on one leg. And

(09:41):
I think we should do a full episode on flamingos
at some point, because a really neat and my daughter
was so taken with them. We ended up getting her
a large flamingo painting for her bedroom that was like
twenty bucks at a flea market. And she's enjoying it earnestly,
isn't she. Now she loves it. That's great. So then

(10:01):
all of her who are mocking it, who are mocking
pink flamingos, you're mocking Chuck's daughter directly think about that. Uh.
And there's this other cool thing that I hadn't heard of. Um,
it's sort of like a chain letter that gets passed around.
So here's how it works. What you do is you're

(10:21):
trying to raise money for a charity and have a
little fun while you're doing it. So at night instead
of like teeping somebody's yard. You will set up flamingos
in the yard of a house or a business, and
there's a sign that says, this flock has been placed
here for this charity. Uh, and a dollar will come

(10:42):
pick these things up for a dollar apiece that goes
to this charity, and then that gets passed onto another
yard like a chain letter, right, which is funny. Like
I gotta shout out Smithsonian Mental Floss and thought co
for helping us out with this. But I think in
the Mental Floss article, the author it's clearly much younger
than us because they say like old school chain letters

(11:05):
from the early two thousand, so they know they go
back a lot further than that. I just thought that
was very funny. Yeah, And I think the person like,
if someone put them in my yard, put like a
hundred flamingos for a charity, I would say, all right,
I'll pay the hundred bucks, and then now I get
to pick and I would send them straight to your house.
Of course, like an old school chain letter from the

(11:28):
I get to pick the next house and so on
and so on. Yep, Um, there's there. They're so they're
clearly still around you can still get them today, and
I guess from what I read they still make about
a thousand of them a day and use two hundred
and seventy million pounds of plastic to make pink plastic
lawn flamingos in the United States. M well booted that,

(11:49):
but gated the flamingos. There's also one last little tidbit, Chuck.
There's a rumor an urban legend who knows that if
you see somebody with a plastic pink lawnful mingo in
their front yard, it's a signal that they are swingers. Right,
But I think it's a good time to remember not
everyone with the pineapple in their grocery cart is looking

(12:11):
to hook up, and not every flamingo in the front
yard Mains' swinger hadn't heard the pineapple one. What if
somebody has a pineapple and a flamingo in their front yard.
Oh well, it's all like Donkey Kong. Here you go,
big big fish bowl with a few keys in there.
That's right. Well, that's it for short stuff, right, That's right? Okay,

(12:33):
Well then that means short stuff is out. Stuff you
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