Pink Flamingo

Manufacturing of hardware.

Twenty million of them have been sold since 1957, when Donald Featherstone designed the very first one in chilly Leominster, Mass.

"Tropical elegance, for less than $10," Featherstone says, laughing. "Hard to beat."

But so much "elegance" sprouted up in so many woebegone places, that plastic flamingos, like velvet Elvis paintings, became a symbol of tackiness and. ..

"... cheesy kitsch," says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "The pink flamingo has spent well over half its life as a gag."

Which helps explain why the Union Products plant, which once cranked out 5,000 flamingo pairs every day, is shutting down.

"It's just not feasible for me to make them any more, economically," says Union Products President Dennis Plante.