Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's chuckin, this is short stuff.

We're talking at long last about a topic that has been on my list for shortstop's since basically the first time we came up with shortstop's, which is pink plastic lawn flamingos, one of the all time great pieces of yard art anyone's ever come up with.

Do you own them? No, I'm not mean. OK, you're not mean.

Oh, you'll you'll see. I'll describe why. I think owning a pink flamingo is kind of mean.

Oh, interesting. All right. OK. You can do that after the break. It's going to be a setup for a teaser. Yeah, maybe that will be a setup. Let's tell them first about the origin of these things everybody knows we're talking about. Right. Like the plastic pink flamingos that people had on their lawns, especially in the 50s and maybe the 60s nowadays are super kitschy and campy. But plastic lawn flamingos, right?

That's right. They were created by a man named Don Featherstone, who is a sculptor who was hired by union products from Leominster, Mass. Or however they pronounce it there. Sure. There's some strange pronunciation for that. Right. And they are the plastics capital of the world. And he created the very first one as his second work assignment in 1957.

Yeah, union products had to deal flamingos and they also had ducks. And his first assignment was to turn the ducks from 2D into 3D. And the Ducks were the long, long time biggest seller. It was called Duck and Ducklings. And people would put plastic ducks like all in their yard as if they were just hanging out in their grass.

Yeah. So Featherstone created the flamingos. They cost 276 for two of them because you got to sell them in pairs.

I think they're still sold in pairs. Yeah. You got to have a little buddy. You don't just have one. And that's by the way, that's about 25, 50 today.

Yeah. So it's a pretty good deal today because there, what, like 15 or 16 bucks now? Yeah.

So apparently they came about because this was the beginnings of sort of the cookie cutter subdivision revolution. And, you know, if you wanted to put something in your yard to make yourself stand out from your neighbor, a pink flamingo was a fine way to do so.

Yeah. And the pink flamingo was was chosen to be like the second one because the pink and everything Caribbean was super in like tiki culture was kind of big around that time. And it was a smash hit. Like people started buying them by the boatloads. The moment they hit the market, it just was perfectly timed. It was exactly what everybody was looking for. And they were still, you know, 25 bucks isn't, you know, free. But they were they were affordable, basically everybody who could afford them.

And so they became this kind of emblem of suburban working class culture like that was a certain group of people prized pink flamingo lawn ornaments and put them on their yards non ironically, that's very important.

Right. Which is a very big reason why in the 1960s there was a backlash against them. Like so many things in the 1950s that mom and dad loved, the 60s came along and the hippie said, I'm done with that. Screw your conformity. I'm not going to play your games. I'm counterculture, baby. And those lawn gnomes and flamingos are terrible. Get them out of here. Yeah, but then, of course, the 70s rolled back around and they're like, hey, man, who cares that things are cool, let's bring them back.

But the reason that they were cool and the whole reason they came back, you can make a really strong case is because of a single American director out of Baltimore, Maryland, named John Waters, that he is basically single handedly responsible for bringing back the pink flamingo. But the key difference is that when he brought the pink flamingo back, he brought it back and ran it through a completely different paradigm so that it came out the other end, totally schlocky, totally campy, and lost every bit of earnestness and was completely saddled with irony from that point on because he created a movie in nineteen seventy two known around the world is one of the most offensive movies ever made that he called Pink Flamingos.

That's right.

And I guess before we take that break to find out why they're mean, what you feel they're mean, we should mention that John Waters, who I just called Roger Waters and did a retake feel like I should point out, gay icon in the USA. And so as a result, gay bars started using pink flamingos as mascots. And you could find at drag shows you could find them on earings of performers and on their high heels. And then, you know, it kind of became sort of this a symbol for for gay America in the 70s in the United States.

Hi. Hi. Hi, camp. Hi, camp. All right. Let's take a break. We will take that break. I think that's a good idea. All right. We're going to follow up with a little bit more right to this.

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OK, so when when John Waters, like, breathed the second life into Pink Flamingos, pink lawn flamingo ornaments, when they came back, they were they were brought back, like he said, in the gay community big time. But then they also kind of spread out further and further into the larger community in America and became kind of part and parcel with prankster ism like they were they were frequently put on people's lawns prank basically, like what person could possibly want lawn pink lawn flamingos.

Right. So if we put them on, somebody wanted to hysterical prank, but also in in some way. And I think a lot of people didn't realize that they were necessarily doing this, but it was part of the whole second life of it was mocking the people who originally enjoyed pink lawn flamingos earnestly in mocking their taste. And that is why I think Pink Flamingos are kind of mean these days.

Oh, so you think if you put a flying flamingo up, it's. Sort of a hipster ironic, making fun of it kind of thing. Yeah, so do you remember, you know, how Mom jeans are back? Sure. I could not find this article. I searched all over for it, but I read this article, which is basically account of somebody in the fashion industry who was there when mom jeans were brought back and they were brought back in this really mean spirited way among like little 20 something waif models who basically wanted to rub it in the faces of moms, how good they looked even in their frumpy mom jeans, and that's how mom jeans came back.

That, to me, is basically the same principle behind bringing back the Pink Flamingos. It's the way the John Waters put is that they become loaded objects, classes, tools of the well-to-do, mocking the taste of the less fortunate, and that he says that the real plastic flamingo is, in a sense, extinct. You can't have anything that innocent anymore. Thank you. I realize I'm being a little high blown and highfalutin about this whole thing, but I just found it really fascinating that the idea that it is a has this certain level of mockery that you're mocking the taste of people who ever thought those things were neat and enjoyed them on their, you know, at face value.

Sure. And I think both of us are kind of a.. Ironic, you know, flaunting, ironically. Yeah.

At the same time, though, sometimes we just just got to mellow out. Well, that's true, too. I mean, we're not upset about this or anything right now. Are you mad? No, I'm just kidding.

It's all good. So a few more things about the flamingos, though. A couple of neat things. In 1979, if you are familiar with Madison, Wisconsin, and the university there, they planted over a thousand of these in the grass of in front of the dean's office. And then many years later, I think they paid homage to that in 2009 in honor of this prank in the city town council named the Pink Flamingo, the official bird of Madison.

That's right. So the 70s were huge for the pink flamingo, but the 80s were even huger for the first time ever in the history of union products. I think in 1985, six or seven, the Pink Flamingo outsold the duck with ducklings. Law and order met. And some people say, well, it was just it was the 30th anniversary of the Pink Flamingo. So it was getting more press and it had this revival. Other people say, no, no, no, it had nothing to do with the 30th anniversary.

It was the popularity of Miami Vice that brought the flamingos back, but again, brought them back in this way that like people weren't really enjoying them at face value. There was something kind of campy or funny about having the pink flamingo in the front yard.

Well, here at our zoo in Atlanta, one of the very first things that you see when you walk in are the flamingos standing there on one leg. And I think we should do a full episode on Flamingos at some point. Sure. Because they're really neat. And my daughter was so taken with them, we ended up getting her a large flamingo painting for her bedroom that was like 20 bucks at a flea market.

And she's enjoying it earnestly, isn't she? Now she loves it. That's great. So then all of her little mom jeans, we were mocking it, her mocking pink flamingos. You're mocking Chuck's daughter directly.

Just think about that. And there's this other cool thing that I hadn't heard of. It's sort of like a chain letter that gets passed around. So here's how it works. What you do is you're trying to raise money for a charity and have a little fun while you're doing it. So at night, instead of like taking somebody's yard, you will set up flamingos in the yard of a house or a business. And there's a sign that says this flock has been placed here for this charity and a dollar will come pick these things up for a dollar apiece that goes to this charity and then that gets passed on to another yard like a chain letter.

Right. Which is funny. Like I got a shout out Smithsonian mental floss and thought you for helping us out with this. But I think in the middle of this article, the author was clearly much younger than us because they say like old school chain letters from the early 2000s.

So they know they go back a lot further than that. I thought that was very funny. Yeah.

And I think the person like if someone put them in my yard like 100 flamingos for a charity, I would say, all right, I'll pay the hundred bucks. And then now I get to pick and I would send them straight to your house, of course, like an old chain letter from the house. I get to pick the next house and so on and so on. Yeah.

There's so they're clearly still around. You can still get them today. And I guess from what I read, they still make about a thousand of them a day and use 270 million pounds of plastic to make pink plastic lawn flamingos in the United States. Hmm.

Well, boo to that. But yeah, the flamingos there's also. One last little tidbit, Chuck, there's a rumor and urban legend who knows that if you see somebody with a plastic pink lawn flamingo in their front yard, it's a signal that they are swingers.

Right. But I think it's a good time to remember not everyone wants the pineapple on their grocery cart is looking to hook up and not every flamingo in the front yard means you're a swinger.

Hadn't heard the pineapple one. What if somebody has a pineapple and a flamingo in their front yard while it's on like Donkey Kong?

There you go. Big a big fish bowl with a few keys in there. That's right. Well, that's it for short stuff, right? That's right. OK, well, then that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?