The Pink Plastic Flamingo: Florida’s Unofficial State Bird Was Born in Massachusetts

The pink plastic flamingo has stood on Florida lawns for nearly seventy years. The twist? It was invented by a guy in Massachusetts who had never seen a real flamingo.

Don Featherstone and the Bird from Leominster

In 1957, a 21-year-old art school graduate named Don Featherstone started his second week at Union Products, a plastics company in Leominster, Massachusetts. His assignment: sculpt a flamingo. Featherstone had no live birds to work from, so he used a spread from National Geographic called “Ballerinas in Pink” as his reference. He molded the bird in two halves of bright pink plastic, stuck them on wire legs, and called the first one Diego. They sold in pairs. Within a few years, they were everywhere.

How a Plastic Bird Became Florida’s Mascot

Real flamingos had been hunted nearly to extinction in Florida by the early 1900s. But the plastic version did what the live birds couldn’t: it multiplied. Postwar Florida was booming with new subdivisions and retirees, and the flamingo became shorthand for the state’s promise of sun, leisure, and a little bit of flash. Yards from Miami to the Panhandle sprouted flocks. John Waters put a flock of them outside the trailer in his 1972 cult film “Pink Flamingos,” and the birds became the universal symbol of gleeful tackiness. In 1996, Featherstone won the Ig Nobel Prize for Art. By then, his creation had migrated from working-class lawns to ironic garden parties on Park Avenue.

Still Standing on Florida Lawns

Union Products closed in 2006, but a company called Cado Manufacturing bought the original molds and resumed production. Featherstone died in 2015 at 79, having spent 43 years at the company he helped make famous. Today, you can find the birds at every garden center, gas station gift shop, and roadside stand in the state. They show up at weddings, birthdays, and as unofficial welcome committees for new neighbors. The real American flamingo is slowly returning to South Florida after a century-long absence, but the plastic one never left.