It wasn’t always that way. Leominster, a proud town of some 40,000 people, was once the hub of a hugely practical industry: combs. From the time the visionary combmaker, Obidiah Hills, founded his first business there in 1774, Leominster was a hub for this essential item of personal hygiene. In the days before shampoo and indoor plumbing, a Leominster comb, hand-carved out of animal horn and hooves, was only chance many people had to look halfway presentable. Each day thousands of Americans ran Leominster’s finest fine-toothed creations through their oil-spattered, flea-infested scalps. By 1845 there were 24 comb factories within the town’s limits. It swiftly became known as “Comb City.” [...]
In ancient Egypt, the flamingo was considered to be the living representation of the sun god Ra. Whether the ancient god was working through Featherstone is hard to verify, but there was something almost supernatural about the popularity of his creation. Using images plucked from a copy of National Geographic, Featherstone created a plastic bird that was three feet high in hot pink plastic. Typically sold as a pair—with one bird standing upright, the other with its head down—the flamingos became a national obsession. Up until this point the most popular lawn ornament had been the garden gnome. But while the gnome harked backed to the dark fairy-tale forests of Europe, the pink flamingo was an icon of the New World, promising eternal summer and endless sunshine. Perhaps Ra was involved after all. [...]
When Union Products eventually closed down in 2006 it was estimated that they had manufactured over 20 million pink flamingos. Leominster, meanwhile, had been transformed into the capital of the collectible debris of our mass-market culture, the spiritual birthplace of all gimcracks, knickknacks and doodads.
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