Goodbye Plastic Pink Flamingos

It seems that the plastic pink flamingo is going the way of dodo. The plastic bird, a kitsch icon that has populated the front lawns of American homes since the 1950s, is about to become extinct.

Union Products of Leominster, Massachusetts, which has made the birds since 1957, is going out of business.

The moulded plastic sculpture mounted on wire legs has been reviled and revered in equal measure. The bird lent its name to director John Waters's 1972 film examining bad taste. But that only helped to make the hapless bird more desirable.

"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," Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, told the Los Angeles Times.

"Let's face it," Mr Thompson continued, "as iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo."

Wal-Mart has been its biggest customer, selling 250,000 of the birds each year.