Pink flamingo plant closing
LEOMINSTER — Union Products Inc., the original manufacturer of the plastic pink flamingo, will close its doors by Nov. 1, according to the company’s president.
Production of the flamingos stopped in June, along with the company’s other product lines, and the company is now in the process of liquidation, according to its president, Dennis L. Plante.
So says a September 21, 2006 report in the flamingo-hometown paper, the Leominster Sentinel & Enterprise. (An October 20, 2006 report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel gives further details.)
Don Featherstone, who created the plastic pink flamingo, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1996. Don and his wife, Nancy, return to the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony almost every year to take a bow — they inevitably are greeted with delirious applause.
This is not the first unhappy factory-related news concerning the flamingos. In December 2001 we, together with the Museum of Bad Art,launched the Plastic Pink Flamingo Boycott. The boycott was in reaction to somebody — presumably someone in the factory — monkeying with the stylish “Don Featherstone” signature that traditionally signified a flamingo’s authenticity. Countless flamingo fanciers joined the boycott, and eventually the factory relented from its strange de-Featherstoneing action. But perhaps the flamingo population never recovered from the effects of that factory monkeying, or perhaps just the company never recovered.
Our friend Don Featherstone is alive and well. Now we hope that someone will save the flamingos. Please spread the word!