What’s Pink, Plastic And 40 Years Old?

One of the icons of the American landscape - no, not the bald eagle or the bison, but the plastic pink flamingo - is turning 40. And it’s still not getting any respect.

Despite its enduring appeal (15 to 20 million have been sold over the years), the lawn ornament can’t escape the T-word, a fate that ruffles the feathers of flamingo fans.

“People say they’re tacky, but all great art began as tacky,” said Don Featherstone, the Union Products vice president and artist whose signature is molded in every flamingo body. “Art deco in New York was torn down. But now, they’re putting it back up.”

Featherstone himself is a bit of a strange bird. A sculptor with a classical art background, he and his wife of 20 years dress alike every day.

His plastic company’s catalog pictures page after page of adornments suited for any gardener’s fancy: a 22-inch black-and-white penguin, a blue-headed pheasant, a green-chested rooster.

All nice. But not the same thing.

“I tried to put some ducks out there because this is duck country,” said Mary-Elizabeth Buckham, who has a flock of pink plastic birds on the lawn of her Victorian home in Centreville, Md. “But nobody wanted to see what they were doing.”

Buckham dresses her 34 birds in homemade clothes and rearranges them every week for an adoring public.

At Christmas there was a nativity scene with flamingo wise men and a flamingo baby Jesus. At Thanksgiving there was a “flurkey flock” and at Halloween, flamingo ghosts.

The first pink flamingos in 1952, were flat, made of plywood. They were made of foam a few years later, but dogs tended to eat them. They’ve been made of plastic since 1957.

Half a million of the birds move off store shelves in America, Mexico and South America every year, at $9.95 a pair. With numbers like that, Featherstone says he’ll suffer the sarcasm.

“As long as they keep buying them, I really don’t care,” he says with a smile.