ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607300122
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
SOURCE: LEA SITTON KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
The pink flamingoes are frozen, each poised forever on a single slender leg.
Quiet spreads softly across the shiny green lawn as you move up the bricked walk, toward the front door of the house on a Kodachrome day.
Suddenly, over by the impatiens, the Earth shivers.
A flower pot rises and a small animal comes up out of the ground, wearing the pot like a lady wears a hat. It might be a rabbit or a raccoon, a squirrel, a skunk, a chipmunk or a gopher.
It's talking, telling you that the resident is out back or that all packages should be delivered next door. Maybe it invites you to leave a message, so the resident knows that you stopped by or dropped off a package.
This is Lawn Buddy: America's first animated lawn ornament, according to the patent folks. He works like an answering machine.
And he promises to put a new wrinkle in the apron of green out front. The promoters are already lining up, ready to make this the next gotta-have-it for homeowners.
``Used to be, people had little gnomes in the garden. Now, they'll have Lawn Buddies,'' said Bob Killian of Philadelphia, whose son invented the thing, which is ``very realistic'' plastic, 41/2 inches wide and 5 inches tall.
``Everybody needs a buddy,'' son Bill said, ``and it'll kind of be the buddy system.''
Raucous laughter rolled through the Killians' home this week as father and son talked about the project. The elder Killian, a ceramist, is his son's business manager. The younger is a tree specialist.
They are working out a contract with a manufacturer, and they expect to have the product on the shelves by next spring. Right now, they figure it'll go for $29.95.
In the meantime, Lawn Buddy is getting attention.
It took the gold medal in the garden and home-novelties division at the 12th Inpex inventors' show in Pittsburgh in May. Thirty countries were represented at the show, which is considered a premier event for small-time inventors and featured 1,500 inventions.
Business Week magazine referred to the Lawn Buddy in a May issue, and a mention in Popular Mechanics is expected. Last month, a crew from the BBC children's show ``It'll Never Work'' arrived to film a segment.
The Killians have the number to the private line of a bigwig at the Home Shopping Network. She wants an exclusive, before the product hits store shelves, the men said.
``This is amazing, from Day 1, how it's taken off,'' the younger man said. Out of the ``hundreds and hundreds of people'' who've heard about Lawn Buddy, only one didn't like the idea, he said. ``That was my aunt - but she's 86. She went `ehhhhh?'''
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KRT. Lawn Buddy is an animated lawn ornament that worksby CNBlike an answering machine. It's not always a bunny. It also comes as
a raccoon, a squirrel, a skunk, a chipmunk or a gopher. color.