Neander97's Historical Trivia
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Neander97 / Historic Trivia presents: An un-natural history of flamingos, including the evolution & history of the Pink Plastic Flamingo (Phoenicoptertis rubber plasticus). (Copyleft April 2001)
Neander97's Historical Trivia
"More Stuff To Clutter-Up Cyberspace"neander97 @yahoo.com
FLAMINGOS: AN UN-NATURAL HISTORY - -The evolution of Phoenicoptertis rubber plasticus
It was the best of times . . . it was the worst of times . . .
It was America in the 1950s . . . it was the Eisenhower Years.
Kitsch was Queen . . . nylons had seams . . . formica kitchens were the rage . . . tupperware parties were the social events to die for.
We've made
Grandpa
Look so trim
The local
Draft board's after him
Burma-Shave
Does She or Doesn't She . . . Choosy Moms choose Jif . . . You'll wonder where the yellow went . . .
TV dinners and DDT . . .
Howdy Doody and Howl . . .
the La Leche League and Thalidomide . . .
Dr. Seuss and Ed Gein . . .
bumper bullets and the bomb . . .America, it seemed, had it made in the shade. We ruled the world . . . hell the way the country's economy raced down the track; it seemed like we would soon own the World.
Then why did the Nation feel a vague sense of unease? Why, in age of heretofore-unimagined prosperity and material well being, did we feel as if something was missing in our lives? And, if something was missing, what was it? And more importantly, where could we purchase it?
Who would save the nation from this malaise?
Picture this America. . .
The year is 1957 . . . the place is Fitchburg, Massachusetts, home to Union Products Inc (http://www.unionproducts.com/). Union Products, a simple novelty-plastics company trying to turn a buck in the dog-eat-dog business environment of the post-war years.
Management at Union had a dream . . . a vision . . . a plan. Union, it was believed, was destined to become the nation's leading manufacturer of lawn ornaments -- lawn art to the true cognoscenti.
Yes, that's right, lawn art . . . a folk-art form that had flourished throughout the nation's history. In the 19th century, these humble objets d'art were forged from brass or cast iron. During the grim years of the 30s thousands of poor, but not downtrodden, Americans whittled, carved, and painted a veritable Noah's ark of wooden lawn animals to sell to their brethren for the price of a meal.
However, this was the second half of the Twentieth Century, could this nation make do with mere one-dimensional plywood critters to grace its lawns? Union Products believed that America and Americans deserved better than that. All Americans deserved . . . no was entitled to . . . yes was endowed with the right to populate their front yard with a menagerie of plastic animals.
This, then, was Union's mission. To the fill void behind those tidy, white picket fences with plastic lawn ornaments in the animal or animals of the consumer's choosing. But why was the public not cooperating? Why did sales lag? What was it, that the connoisseur of lawn art sought.
To find the answer to this and other burning questions, Union turned that stronghold of cultural awareness . . . that trendsetter of taste, the Worcester Art Museum School (WAMS) of Worcester, Massachusetts. There, the company attempted to lure a promising young sculptor away from the realm of art and culture and in the world of business. There, the company found Don Featherstone, WAMS' own Rodin in the rough and offered him the chance to be gainfully employed.
Being a child of the 50s, Featherstone briefly debated the merits and rewards of the artist's life versus that of a steady paycheck and signed on with Union. Our hero, however, did not throw his artistic sensibilities out the window when he departed WAMS. He instinctively grasped that which had eluded the corporate doyens at Union . . . Featherstone knew that to be accepted by the public; plastic lawn ornaments had to be realistic and life-like.
Featherstone's first semi-commercial success, a minor masterpiece of plast-o-realism, was Charlie the Duck. Charlie, who was modeled after a live duck that Featherstone had kept in his studio / laboratory, was moderately well received by shoppers. While management remained skeptical, Featherstone knew in his heart that he was on the right track -- plasto-realism in the form of anatomically correct (more or less) would tickle the consumer's fancy and fill the company's coffers.
With the experience of Charlie the Duck under his belt, Featherstone embarked on his quest to sculpt the Pietà of plastic lawn ornaments. Even as far back as the Dark Ages of lawn art's history, in the Dust Bowl Days of the Depression, aspiring artisans had crafted, carved and painted flamingos. But these wooden fowl, however crimson they were, could not hold a candle to the visions of plasto-realistic pink flamingos that resided in Featherstone's brain.
Relying on photos of flamingos found in an old issue of National Geographic, our hero set out to sculpt his greatest masterpiece. With his impeccable feel for what was real and anatomically correct, he sculpted clay mode
ls of the feathered flyers. From the clay models his peers at Union constructed aluminum molds of the birds. And from those molds emerged the quintessential symbol of suburbia in the 50s . . . the pink plastic lawn flamingo. Crafted from the purest polyethylenes . . . colored to match birds such as those never imagined by Mother Nature . . . a new species of Aves was born. Forged in the fires of out of Union Products' pursuit of post-war prosperity and brought to life though one man's dedication to the tenets of plast-o-realism, the Mingo, formally known as the Pink Plastic Flamingo (Phoenicoptertis rubber plasticus) burst on the American scene.
The suburbs were never again to be the same . . . Levitown had been irrevocably and irreverently changed. Once untold millions of passenger pigeons called this nation home. Their time had came and passed. Now America was home to thousands upon thousands of pink plastic lawn flamingos.
America had changed . . . some would argue for the better, a few would say for the worse, but none could deny that the change was real.
1957 . . . a watershed year in this nation's history. Was it a coincidence that the birth of Flamingo plasticus occurred at the same time . . .
- That Kerouac introduced the words "beat" and "beatnik" into the American popular consciousness and gave a name to a generation?
- That the President sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate a high school?
- That Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin) died?
- That there were 47,200,000 TV sets being watched in 39,500,000 homes?
- That Barry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records?
- That George de Mestral of Switzerland patented Velcro?
Coincidence? If it can be argued that the advent of pink plastic lawn flamingos did not profoundly alter the fabric of American culture and society, then one might as well deny the correlation between the introduction TANG breakfast beverage crystals and the launch of Sputnik.
back to The Flamingo From Heck. . .
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