Did you know there are more plastic flamingos in the USA than real ones? Plastic flamingos are widely considered to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch – the American's answer to garden dwarfs. Designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone while working for Union Products, the pink flamingo has gone from a piece of Florida exotica to a symbol of trash culture. Featherstone sculpted his 3-D flamingos from clay, working from photos of the birds in National Geographic.

The species stopped replicating, when manufacturer Union Products went out of business on November 1, 2006. However Faster-Form Corporations now purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos and will be resuming production in order to save the plastic flamingos from extinction.

See also: It came out of the sea.