April 17, 2021 • 37 mins
Tupperware won immediate design acclaim when it was released in 1947, but it took a pioneering female executive to make a line of plastic food storage into an icon of the American postwar boom. Learn about the surprisingly intriguing history of Tupperware, in this classic episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, friends, Do you want to know how Tupperware works
all over again? But you're in the right spot because
it is a throwback time to how Tupperware works. This
is a good one. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:26):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant,
and there's Jerry. So this is stuff you should know herb.
Have you ever heard a tupper Warrior burp? Yeah? Sort of?
I mean it, you know, it doesn't sound like a burb.
It's just sort of like, can you emulate one? Well,
it's just like a like air just sort of. It
(00:47):
doesn't sound like a burb. It sounds like a dude, yeah,
something different. Yeah, but I don't think you could call
it a Tupperware bart because it probably wouldn't sell us much. Well,
even a burp is a little you know. Okay, So
I guess I have heard one before when I was
a kid, But I thought like there was like a
burp or something like that. Or do you remember that cartoon?
(01:08):
It might have been like a what was the Droopy?
I think it might have been a droopy cartoon. So
some sort of tech savory cartoon, where like they had
a machine that burped radishes. But I like it. It
was a great I think it was like the Kitchen
of the Future, one great cartoon Bert. That's what I assumed.
(01:28):
The tupperware thing was like, Yeah, that was a big
droopy fans I thought I was missing out. Nope, No,
it's just a little air being expelled. But it was
a very very important bit of air because Chuck. At
the time that tupperware came out, women were using like
basically a pot that they cooked something in, maybe a bowl,
(01:52):
and putting a shower cap over it and storing it
in the ice box. You know what they call that
primitive that primitive food storage. It sounds like tuk Tuk
would have done something like that, not men and women
in the nineteen forties, except he would have used like
some sort of Madagascar type animal pelt sure from the
(02:15):
movie Madagascar. No, not Madagascar. I say, that's what I'm
thinking of. I say, I haven't seen it the one.
So they're very similar. It is setting like different climbs
in different time periods. I've never seen me. They're different
animal protagonists. I just I can get a lot from
commercials yeah. Uh so, yeah, Tupperware. Let's let's talk about it. Um,
(02:35):
the original pat and I love the name of this thing,
and you know it was created. You want to drop
this cool little fact by the name, the name of
the guy, Earl Tupper. Yeah I never knew that. Yeah,
I guess I didn't either. I didn't didn't think about it. No,
you think of Tupper wears nothing but tupper ware, and
there's no Tupper who invented It's crazy talk, right, Yeah? No,
(02:56):
there was a Tupper named Earl and that Tupper tup
tup for why yes, the Earl of Tupper he uh
he has a patent um call it, well had he
doesn't have it anymore. Uh. The e s tupper open
mouth container and non snap type of closure. Therefore this
by the way, Yeah, that's why I read it like that.
But I was explaining that to the everybody else. Do
(03:19):
they know me? This is going poorly? No, it's not so. Um.
Let's you want to talk a little bit about Tupper himself. Yeah.
He um was a bit of a reclusive figure, as
we'll find, but he was also like he was a
pretty sharp guy. I a grouch, I think, is it
possible way to describe him maybe a bit of a mad, smart, tinkering, grouchy. Um.
(03:46):
He disliked his father because he felt his father lacked ambition.
And this is when he was like ten, right, Um,
all you do is just go to the races and
lay around. He well, his parents owned a like a
farm of sorts, but I think I get the idea.
It was like kind of a harvest your own farm.
And this kid, little Earl Tupper, when he was like
ten twelve, he was like pitching the idea to to
(04:07):
build like a children's playground on the ground of this
pick your own farm for you know, to attract tourists
and stuff. And his dad was like, it sounds like
a lot of work. Totally, just go to school or something.
Get out of my hair. And Earl was like, you're
gonna pay for ignoring me. But he he was of
(04:27):
sharp contrast to his father, is what I'm trying to say.
He was very ambitious. Big tinker came up with a
lot of different patent ideas and apparently patents too. Yeah.
He uh, he had a book of inventions. Uh. There
was a better stocking guarter, which is a very sexy
thing for a child. To admit, right, UM, a better
way to remove a burst appendix. Yeah, yeah, that's for real. UM,
(04:52):
A dagger shaped comb to be clipped to the belt.
Um pants that wouldn't lose their crease. UM. One of
great import the customized cigarettes. I can't believe that didn't
catch on, Like for real, you know how Coca Cola
does those uh stupid cans and bottles now with names?
Oh now I understand. Yeah, there were cigarettes that said
like Sporty or the collegiate on the cigarette, so it
(05:14):
would have like your sports team like emblazoned on the side.
Maybe the problem is none of these inventions took off.
You know this guy literally well he could give his
inventions away, but like he almost literally couldn't give him
give them away. He he ended up manufacturing these things
(05:34):
and giving them away as like premiums for other stuff
like cigarettes and things like that. Yeah. So, UM he
starts a a tree uh doctor business, Tupper tree Doctors
that UM failed after um the depression, people were cutting
back on things like tree doctoring, so he went out
of business and in a very fortuitous move, went and
(05:57):
worked UM for Visca aid Plant, which is a division
of DuPont making plastics, right, and this is where things
kind of started taking shape. Yes, yes, yes, So basically
he gets into plastics and this town in Massachusetts that
he ended up in where the viscaloid plant was. He
(06:18):
was all over New England basically growing up, right, but
this particular town was kind of like a mad scientists
mecca where like all of this stuff is going on
in plastics, all these little tiny plastic manufacturing outfits are,
you know, start It's like a startup town for plastics
in like the thirties or forties, because they're like, we
have this new thing, like what all can we do
(06:39):
with it? Yeah? And which, by the way, plastic, especially polyethylene.
Polyethylene was invented by accident, and by the forties they
had still kind of they perfected the polyethylene or had
come out perfect, but they hadn't figured out quite how
to use it. And Earl Tupper was one of those
guys in the forties on the cutting edge of taking
(07:00):
plastic and figuring out how to mold him in the
right shape, how to keep him from being oily or
sticky or falling apart. When they were sitting out in
the sunlight or all this stuff. This guy is doing
all these tests and he ends up coming up thanks
to getting a block of this pure polyethylene from DuPont.
The good stuff, the good stuff, the uncut stuff. Um.
(07:20):
And he figures out how to make this bowl a
wonder lire bowl is what he calls it. Yeah, and um,
DuPont at the time didn't think that they could even
mold plastic. Like he was smarter than their guys because
he figured out how to do it. And um. Then
along with the design, the the patented tupperware seal that
(07:41):
made it so useful and famous, that made the what
sound that made the like the burping sound or tooting sound. Um.
He originally got that idea for the seal from paint cans, apparently,
the fact that you could turn a paint can upside
down and it wouldn't leak paint out all over the place.
And he said, I guess we can do us with food,
(08:02):
you know, yeah, like put food in here. It's sealed.
Look at the demonstration. It's upside down and I'm shaking
it and there's none of that gravy coming out. What right,
the grave is not coming out. I can drop this
bowl and it's not gonna break because everyone knows how
clumsy housewives are breaking stuff all over And the fact
that it um is that you burp it right and
(08:26):
it makes that sound, and you're basically preserving the food
for many, many days to come, which was huge because
a lot of the people who were um homemakers in
the forties and fifties, they had lived through the depression
and they remembered exactly what it was like. So preserving
food was a big deal. And so this thing was
like it's really easy to take for granted these days,
(08:50):
but it was very cutting edge technology. Well, these days
they have all those terrible cheap oh uh, I was
gonna say knockoffs are not knockoffs are major brands. But
you know those little cheap plastic containers that are sold,
they're they're not nearly the quality of Tupperware. No, Tupperware
started all that. Yeah, and this stuff is garbage. The
(09:10):
lids don't fit right ever, they break, they don't they
don't do anything that Tupperware did. Like I have a
Wonder bowl from the nineteen seventies that's still like perfect.
I mean, it's a little worn down, but it's still
like functions perfectly right. Well, it's a testament to tupperware
and that other garbage that stuff, Like I don't have
(09:30):
anything from last year. Well it's made and it was
made during a time of much more disposable thinking. You know.
At the time, it was like we're going to make
something now will last forever. Yeah, and I think they
still have a lifetime guarantees on everything. Yeah, Like you
could send in a tupperware piece from the sixties and they'll,
(09:52):
you know, if it's broken and it meets the requirements,
like you know, you didn't smash it with a hammer
or something. Um, because they can prove you. They'll give
you like credits or the equivalent of what you could
get today or something. It's like, well you paid for that.
But like let's see what the West Aid currency calculator
has to say about that. So, um, he formed upper Plastics. Uh.
(10:14):
Things did not take off though, um like he thought
they would. He put him in department stores and hardware
stores for some reason. Oh yeah, not a good place
to sell your tupperware. Yeah. I mean nowadays I can
see that, but back then you probably just went to
hardware stores for nails and hammers and stuff. Yeah, I'm
sure there are home goods and stuff too. It was
probably closer to a general store in the hardware stores today,
(10:36):
but even still, they weren't flying off the shelves at
the point they were not. UM. So what he did
was there was another timeline going on at the same time.
UM Stanley Home Products was this, uh, basically pioneered the
non door to door sales in favor of hosting a
(10:58):
party for lack of a better word, in home demonstrations
where you would gather people together. And it was a
guy named Norman Squires had um garnered a lot of
profits in this kind of sales, and they had working
for them a woman named Brownie Wise, right, and she
was selling all kinds of stuff for Stanley Home Products
(11:18):
and uh they called it the hostess group demonstration plan
and she was a great, great salesperson. Yeah. So these
people at Stanley Home Products basically found Tupperware on their
own and started selling it at these hostess parties. Right. Yeah,
she formed her own company called Tupperware Patio Parties. Oh
(11:39):
did she? Yeah, before she was hired. Before she was hired,
and she was selling so much of it that Earl
Tupper got in touch with her and was like, I
can't sell this stuff in stores like you're beating, like
department stores in New York City sales records she and
she yeah, she really was. She had a lot of charms.
She had. Um. She figured out that this burp thing
(12:01):
that was so essential and made this product so revolutionary,
right that, um, it wasn't like intuitive, you didn't just
understand how to work it, and so it wasn't helping sales,
which again seems weird today, but back then, you know,
people like, what is this weird colored thing? Right? Does
go together? And they were just banging them together in
(12:23):
the aisle of a hardware store crying. Um. They she
figured out that if you demonstrate this to people, especially
in like somebody's house or whatever and they've had a
couple of martinis and there's or Derv's, people are apt
to buy these things. And yeah, like you said, she
started out selling department stores hardware stores obviously. Um, and
(12:45):
she got hired on by Earl Tupper. She was in
Detroit at the time. I think I think she'd moved
down to Orlando when she was hired. Really by that point, Yeah,
she was from Beauford, Georgia, originally. Yeah, she was from Earl,
Georgia and uh ended up um being married and divorced,
which was pretty unusual at the time. And she was
a single mom. Yep, the little Jerry Wise. That's right.
(13:06):
She Unfortunately her husband was a violent drunk. I saw
that too, So that's not saying that, that's PBS taking
the fall for twe So she was only married to
him for about six years and then it was basically like,
I'm gonna make my own way. He only had an
eighth grade education, and she was killing it on the
sales front. Yeah, she she really was. So it took
before we get any further about Brownie Wise. Great name,
(13:29):
awesome name. Yeah, maybe not a band name, but a
great name. The brown the Brownie Wise would be a
good name. Or the the Brownie Wise Massacre. Yeah sure, yeah,
there you go, or Brownie Wise over drive. Both of
those anyway for one another. I guess the point that
I'm trying to get to. Let's take a break. Okay,
(14:05):
So Brownie Wise has her Tupperware patio Parties company out
selling stores. She gets hired on um they literally divide
the company into uh two sides, the Tupperware manufacturing up
in Massachusetts and then Tupperware home parties down in Orlando.
Down in Orlando, yeah, where she lives. Basically, Earl Tupper
(14:26):
comes to her in n and says, Hey, how would
you like to be one of like three female high
level executives in the United States in the world, I
would guess, And she said, that's sure, why not, I'll
do you a favor. And I said she was a
very interesting woman. If I didn't, I did in my
head and meant to say it, but she, Um, there's
(14:46):
apparently a movie coming out about her life, starring Sandra Bullock.
You did not say that, and I did see that,
So there you go. I couldn't find any information on
except that I think it's in uh in pre uh
pre production right now. Oh, I see, I think it's
going to happen. But um, yeah, I mean she she's
one of the great uh woman entrepreneurs that this country
(15:09):
has ever seen, the world has ever seen. Really, yeah,
because she took this tupper wear, which everyone except the
American public agreed was great. In ninety seven, the year
that Tupper invented this stuff, Time named it this amazing thing.
It won design awards. Yeah, she was on the first
woman on the cover of Business Week magazine, right right,
(15:29):
but even before she came along, everybody, especially in the
art world, in the design world, um said this this,
this stuff is great. But it was just sitting there languishing.
And then the brownie wise comes along and just turns
it into a blockbuster, like turns it into it an
American iconic brand, which it still is today. Yeah. And
what she realized, which is uh, was a stroke of genius,
(15:51):
was it's the nineteen fifties. The suburbs are happening post
World War two in a big way. Um, there's a
lot of the men that are that are homemakers, that
are I guess we could just say they were bored
and looking for something to do well. Plus also they
had very um, they had very real constrictions on their
(16:14):
time where like they're basically freedom of movement. They didn't
have cars, they didn't have things like this, they didn't
have a lot of ways to make money. Yeah. Well,
and again they were out in the suburbs for the
first time. It's not like many of these were connected
by subway or anything. That was still an inner city deal. Right. So,
But rather than view these places as vast like waste
lands of isolation. Brownie Wise said, no, these are like
(16:37):
little tiny social networks where people know and trust one
another and they're bored out of their skulls and they're
looking for ways to make money. Like so, not only
do you have a really great market to sell this to,
you have a really great workforce that's just sitting there idol.
And she said, how would you gals like to sell tupperware?
And they went, let's do this, that's right. And what
(16:59):
she did was came up with a system where and
you could work your way up the chain um from
sales all the way. Well, let's let's just detail it.
What you are is your consultant at first, which is
out there, you know, holding the party, hosting these parties.
We'll talk about everybody's chilling. Yeah, and then you can
work your up to manager if you organize a certain
(17:22):
number of parties, and then managers, uh, we're eventually recruiting
other women. So if you recruit enough women and increased sales,
then you could rise to distributor. And that was the
highest level you could attain at that point. Yes, you
could be a distributor. You have your own office, you
have your network of managers and then they manage the
(17:43):
consultants or the party throwers, party hosts, and UM basically
she started her own army of salespeople. Yeah, so Chuck
incentibized salespeople. Right now, there are two point nine million
people in the world selling tupperware. Every three seconds, there's
another Tupperware party. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, right,
(18:05):
So she she put together this workforce. And again it
was UM, this guy named Norman Squires who came up
with this idea that led to UM being a huge,
huge hit for Tupperware, but also later on avon Um
and Mary Kay and Pampered Chef and like all of these,
all of these brands that like are sold through hostess
(18:29):
parties basically get you in our house and get you drunk,
and so just just leave me a blank check basically.
But the it wasn't invented by Brownie Wise, but she
definitely perfected it for sure. So UM she tapped this workforce.
And one of the ways that she kept people excited
and loyal not just the fact that they could rise
(18:51):
throughout this hierarchy UM in the tupperware industry, but there
there was also like this thing that she created called
the Jubilee every year down Orlando. It's a big company party,
it was. And they would just pull out all the stops.
Like they would bury fur coats, they would bury blenders.
One of the buyers once said that he bought a
(19:12):
hundred thousand blenders once for the Jubilee. They would just
bring all these Tupperware sales associates and just basically throw
them a party for a few days and let them
just win free stuff and have a great time. And
when you say, Barry, I think we should explain, because
it sounds really weird. They would bury these prizes and
people would go and dig them up. Right. It wasn't
like you can't have this. Look at what you can't have.
(19:34):
We're burying It just sound you're like, they'd bury fur coats,
they'd bury anything that moved. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but
it was all part of the fun. Apparently they lost
a lot of them too. Yeah. Years later, um at
the at the Tupperware headquarters in Orlando, they went to
dig a pond and they found a bunch of the
prizes that had never been found. Yes, some say there's
still fur coats buried all over Orlando. By the illuminati. Right. So, um,
(20:01):
those are the big jubilee parties, a big company parties,
great for morale. Um. The hostess uh themselves or the
consultants would um, they would make percentage. They'd basically make
a cut what they were able to sell, as well
as get prizes. Um like these really neat prizes. And
the more parties you hosted, the better the prizes would get.
(20:23):
So it's like it's like the wild West. It's the
heyday for these women. They're like earning their own money
for a change. They're getting these great prizes. They're feeling
great about themselves. They're not bored any longer. And their
husbands were like, WHOA, what's going on here? Give me
that money you made? Yeah, exactly. And things were so
successful with this model that that was their only sales
(20:45):
model up until the late nineteen eighties. Right. You couldn't
even buy the stuff in stores. No, he just stopped.
It wasn't even worth the money or effort to distribute
his stories. They just did it through parties and home parties.
Thank you, Brownie Wise. Right, so um, in like you said,
in eighty they started selling it through UM catalogs. I
(21:06):
guess uh yeah, I think they cat I've seen like
older catalogs from like the fifties and sixties, So I
don't know what that means. Maybe over the phone, you
saw Tupperware one catalog. Yeah, it's on our it's on
the podcast page for this episode. There's a link to
this kind of design layout and it has some catalogs.
So it must have been like ordered by phone. Oh yeah,
(21:27):
maybe so. And then just about ten years later in
Tupperware had their first website, which e commerce in that
was fairly forward thinking. Yeah, that's true, you know. Yeah,
um so this caught like wildfire. Today you can it's
not just like an American institution. There are Tupperware parties,
(21:48):
like we said, at the rate of one every three seconds,
and more than a hundred countries around the world. I
had no idea that Tupperware was that popular in like
Asia and India, and they said half a million, more
than half a million every year in France alone. Yeah,
of Tupperware sales are outside of the US these days. Yeah,
(22:09):
and it's a I mean like it's got it's moving
like gangbusters. Last I saw I was trading at like
sixty three dollars a share, which is down from like
a hundred in December. Maybe, UM like it's it's a
really set company again these days, like it's been able
to just be on the brink of utter irrelevance when
it finds a new market, when it figures out a
(22:31):
new way to to sell, when it figures out a
new product, like currently right now in China, um Tupperware
is making tons of cash selling a thousand dollar water filter,
and they're doing it by traveling from town to town
and setting up these in home demonstrations or public demonstrations
and showing how to do it. So they're like taking
(22:51):
the Tumperware model that Brownie Wise like really perfected and
and figuring out how it best works and cultures around
the world. Yeah, I know. They make um all so
like h depending on your country and what they eat,
like certain shaped UM containers, right like round bread containers
for non in India. How about that? So what happened
to Brownie Wise? I guess she retired, was thanked, carried
(23:14):
out on everyone's shoulders, and lived a great fulfilled life
until her death. Right, Well, we're gonna tell you right
after this break, all right, Josh, let's fast forward to UM.
(23:46):
The Tupperware. Business is booming, Brownie Wise is a bit
of a celebrity. The twist is going like Gangbusters? Was it? Probably? Okay?
People are still twist in the night away? I mean
what was that like? Probably started three years. Sure there
was some squares still twisting. Yeah, they weren't doing the
(24:07):
mashed potato yet. No, I think that was a little later. Okay. Um,
so business is booming, Brownie Wise is killing it. She's
a celebrity. Earl Tupper um starts to get a little
jealous over the years. It's as simple as that. Yeah.
As much as he liked didn't seek or want the limelight,
he was still jealous that Brownie Wise people thought that
(24:27):
she was Tupperware and that she started the company um
and started selling like I can sell anything like this.
So she didn't say that in the media said she could.
She could have done this with any brand. She's that great.
Well she could, And Earl Tupper wanted to be like, well, no,
I mean my product that I invented is you know
(24:48):
a big part of this, if not the thing. I'm
Earl Tupper right, so he um he apparently Also she
stopped kind of cow towing to him quite as much. Um,
but I got a lot great for while. Yeah, and
again he had said to their PR department and to
any media interviewer, like, yes, this lady is the face
(25:08):
of Tupperware. Treater, is such, promoter, is such, And he,
just like you said, ended up getting jealous. I didn't
like that she wasn't cows outing to him any longer,
and in said you're fired. Yeah. He The story I
read was that he wanted to sell the company and
cash in, and that he didn't think and was advised
(25:29):
that it would be really hard to sell a company
with a woman in such a prominent position on the board.
And so he, uh, like you said, just unceremoniously get
rid of her, gave her one year salary. It was
like thirty grand zero stock in this company that she
had built almost from the ground up. Yeah, or help
build at least. And um, I gotta say that was
(25:51):
her You know, that was her mistake. She should have
gotten some stock along the way. Yeah, I guess you know,
she's too busy selling and jam, I mean and exactly
she was imagined thirty five grand a year was a
pretty good salary at the point. You want me to
look it up, I will you can. So she got
that small pay out. She went um and what he
(26:12):
said to her was is that there were some accounting
errors in the previous year. She wouldn't come to Massachusetts
to talk to him about it, and sort of dug
In says that she said that she had gotten sicker,
injured and couldn't leave Florida. He finally went down to Florida,
um and basically said that, you know, these jubilees are
too expensive. The landscaping you've done here in Florida, the
(26:35):
company headquarters is too expensive. You're spending too much money
on clothes. Uh. And we own all that stuff, We
own all your clothing. What well, I mean that's I
don't know if he actually took it, but he basically
was like, you know, she paid for all that stuff
through the company as she should have, you know, to
keep up appearances. But um, yeah, that was it for her.
She started a small company called Cinderella Cosmetics that folded
(26:59):
after a year and sort of faded into obscurity. So
then um Earl Tupper uh sold out that the next
year I think sixteen million. Yeah, he sells out for
sixteen million dollars. Nice. Cash to rex All Drug Company,
which was eventually absorbed by Kraft, who apparently now owns Tupperware.
(27:21):
I think maybe it's the parent company. Um and yeah,
sixteen million in nineteen fifty eight. It's not too bad
for a boy who couldn't get his parents to build
a playground on the family pick your own whatever farm.
Did you find out if she thirty five grand was
a good salary? Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was like
two hundred and I think thirty two thousand dollars back then. Yeah,
(27:45):
that's good. It's not bad, I mean especially for a executive. Yeah. Um.
But he sold the whole thing for sixteen million, gave
her one year salary, moved to Costa Rica, bought in island,
announced as US citizenships so we didn't have to pay
any taxes on. Got divorced before all that, right, and
uh said, sion are everybody, I'm going to Costa Rica
(28:07):
to buy an island and keep a note pain in
my pocket. So anytime an idea for a new invention hits,
I'll have it. Yeah. And just like probably you know,
eight pineapples on his island. Yeah. He died in three
in Costa Rica. Uh, seventy six and she died in
nine and um, Tupperware has not gone out of fashion.
(28:31):
It's it's been featured, uh starting in what year was it,
I guess when they first came out at the Museum
of Modern Art, and then again in two thousand eleven.
I think I even saw this exhibit. In fact, I'm
almost positive I did, because it was about just industrial
design and things, and there's Tupperware all over again because
of its gorgeous of course, now you know that fifties
(28:54):
era retro design. The original line that tupper Um released
is called the Millionaire line, and it came in six colors,
five pastels and one white, right, yellow, blue, green, orange,
and pink. And they're really pretty. Like if you look
at a set of these things and a good condition,
they're gorgeous. He went on to the Plastics Hall of Fame,
(29:18):
UM and now like this stuff from the fifties and sixties,
you can get some decent money on eBay for that stuff,
you know, because it still works and people love that
retro look. Did you know that he refused refused to
have any um any pet bowls designed. He thought it
was tupper Ware was too good for pets to eat
(29:40):
out of. What a jerk. See, I was all on
board until that. Actually I wasn't on board. I was
off board when I found out that he fired Brownie Wise.
Yeah he and then was like, Okay, I've got some money.
See you later. Family moving to Costa Rica. Would you
be funny if he went down and started a cult
with this slinking guy? Um? So Tupperware stayed pretty much
(30:03):
the same until when they UM a designer named Morrison
Cousins basically kind of redesigned for for the new era. Yeah.
He he was UM already a VP I guess at Tupperware,
and he was. He decided that it was a little difficult.
He had an eighty two or eighty one year old
(30:23):
mother at the time eighty seven year old mother at
the time when he was charged with redesigning the Tupperware line,
and UM he from that viewpoint, he redesigned it to
make it easier for UM the aged to use. Right, So,
like that burping lid that you had to like really
kind of have some decent hand strength to put on.
(30:44):
He figured out a way around it by UM using
flaps that opened and close to release the air didn't
require quite as much hand strength. Um, the lids were
made in contrast and close to the bulls, so if
you had a low visibility low vision, not visibility, that's
totally different. If you were wearing all camouflage at the time,
(31:06):
you'd be able to find the lid and the bowl
that go together pretty easy. So he yeah, he made
them easier for old books. Yep. And he was the
guy who brought it online. He did a lot of
good stuff apparently with it. He also took the brand.
I thought this is cool, and I would love to
see this on video because I'll bet it's just so
(31:29):
bizarre and surreal to watch. They broadcast a series of
live temperware parties on some home shopping channel in the
early nineties. That was probably the first home shopping experience.
You know, I think those were around in the eighties.
I think home shopping was already established. When did they
do this early nineties? Oh? I thought you said he
did it like in the sixties. No, no, no, no,
(31:51):
we should do one on home shopping. I'll bet that
has an interesting, weird history. You think I'll look into
I let you know, Okay, my mom's into it, man, QBC.
So did we talk about how to throw a tupperware party.
Yeah we did, We sure did. Okay, did we talk
about tupperware drag parties? We did not? We should, Yeah,
(32:13):
because there's more than one. Yeah, there's well, there's one
person in particular, a guy named Chris Anderson who performs
in drag as Dixie Longate and um sells like a
million dollars worth of Tupperware in the process, Like he
gets paid to perform, Like you gotta pay forty bucks
just to a person just to have I guess he
(32:36):
still does house parties, but he literally does like tours
and does like off Broadway shows and stuff. Now right,
But the whole thing is I mean real tupperware party
where like you can buy tupperware and like he's demonstrating
the tupper wearing. He's kind of giving his own take
on what it's useful for. But he's not the only
um drag show in the country selling tupperware, of course,
(32:57):
not apparently. UH drag queen named Aunt Barbara up in
Long Island is was at least in two thous twelve,
the number one salesperson in North America for Tupperware. It
all makes sense when you think about it so two
fifty grand worth of Tupa in one year. Like the
kitch of the Drag show, the kitch of Tupperware parties,
(33:18):
it all sort of goes hand in hand. And Um,
I went to the website of Dixie Longate and he
has a pretty interesting bio. I have three kids, Winona,
Dwayne and absorbing Junr. It's all made up, I think,
I think maybe, although you never know. But yeah. Now
(33:38):
he has solo stand up shows, um and a recent
theatrical show called never Wear a tube top while Riding
a mechanical bowl and sixteen other things I learned while
I was drinking last Thursday. And apparently that is selling
out venues. It's basically that's selling out venues. We're not,
but that is don't be better. We will one day.
(34:01):
If we did it in drag we'd probably well, no,
that's not true either, one day chuck. Uh wow, that's
a weird way to end this. Yeah, I think it's perfect. Um.
I thought I had something else, but I guess I don't. Oh,
yes I do. PBS did a great documentary called Tupperware
with an exclamation point. It's got a whole website on
(34:21):
online and you can watch parts of the documentary, if
not the whole thing. Yeah, and look for the Sandra
Bullock the Brownie Wise story coming to a theater near
you in a couple of years. Nice job, you said
a theater near you. You just said coming to a
theater near you. That's like wow? Did you ever think
you would grow up to say that like in public? Sure? Okay, Well,
(34:46):
if you want to know more about tupper ware, you
can type that one word and the search part how
stuff works dot com? And uh, since I said search parts,
time for a listener mail and they call this the
strisand effect? Have you ever heard of this? Hello? Josh,
Chuck and Jerry really enjoyed the podcast on Internet censorship.
Although I was disturbed that s OP three oh three exists,
(35:11):
one thing not mentioned that I thought was relevant is
when individuals attempt to censor specific things from their own
life and the resulting fallout that occurs. In two thousand three,
and I remember this happening. Actually, a picture of Barbra
Streisand's home in Malibu appeared in a publicly available collection
of over twelve thousand photos of California Coastline. The collection
(35:31):
was documenting coastal erosion and not related to news paparazzi
or tabloids or anything like that. But Streisand's lawyers filed
a fifty million dollar lawsuit against the photographer, asking the
picture to be taken down for privacy reasons. Before stories
of the lawsuit hit the press, the photo of the
home had only been downloaded six times, two of which
(35:52):
were by her attorneys. During the following month, after the
whole thing became a news story, more than four hundred
thousand people visited the website. Uh. They even coined the
term at the strice end effect an attempt to really
got out of hand for her. Yeah, I did I
remember this blew up in her face. An attempt at
censoring or removing something from the Internet results and said
(36:12):
thing being seen and reported on much more than if
the person requesting it be removed had simply let it
fade into obscurity. Thanks for the podcast. Also possibly a
shout out to my wife Emily, who is nearly as
addicted to stuff you should know as I am nearly
And that is from Brenton Krauss in uh mid Hudson Valley,
New York, USA. So Emily and get on it. So
(36:34):
you're equally as addicted, and thank you Britton for being
fully addicted. Yeah to the brim, I guess uh. If
you want to get in touch with us and talk
to us about Tupperware or um whatever, you can tweet
to us right at s y s K podcast. Josh's
(36:55):
manning that station. You can go on to our awesome
Facebook page courtesy of Chuckers I'm in that station, Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email. We both get those. They come direct
to us to uh stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com and hang out with us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff
(37:17):
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hello, friends, Do you want to know how Tupperware works
all over again? But you're in the right spot because
it is a throwback time to how Tupperware works. This
is a good one. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:26):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant,
and there's Jerry. So this is stuff you should know herb.
Have you ever heard a tupper Warrior burp? Yeah? Sort of?
I mean it, you know, it doesn't sound like a burb.
It's just sort of like, can you emulate one? Well,
it's just like a like air just sort of. It
(00:47):
doesn't sound like a burb. It sounds like a dude, yeah,
something different. Yeah, but I don't think you could call
it a Tupperware bart because it probably wouldn't sell us much. Well,
even a burp is a little you know. Okay, So
I guess I have heard one before when I was
a kid, But I thought like there was like a
burp or something like that. Or do you remember that cartoon?
(01:08):
It might have been like a what was the Droopy?
I think it might have been a droopy cartoon. So
some sort of tech savory cartoon, where like they had
a machine that burped radishes. But I like it. It
was a great I think it was like the Kitchen
of the Future, one great cartoon Bert. That's what I assumed.
(01:28):
The tupperware thing was like, Yeah, that was a big
droopy fans I thought I was missing out. Nope, No,
it's just a little air being expelled. But it was
a very very important bit of air because Chuck. At
the time that tupperware came out, women were using like
basically a pot that they cooked something in, maybe a bowl,
(01:52):
and putting a shower cap over it and storing it
in the ice box. You know what they call that
primitive that primitive food storage. It sounds like tuk Tuk
would have done something like that, not men and women
in the nineteen forties, except he would have used like
some sort of Madagascar type animal pelt sure from the
(02:15):
movie Madagascar. No, not Madagascar. I say, that's what I'm
thinking of. I say, I haven't seen it the one.
So they're very similar. It is setting like different climbs
in different time periods. I've never seen me. They're different
animal protagonists. I just I can get a lot from
commercials yeah. Uh so, yeah, Tupperware. Let's let's talk about it. Um,
(02:35):
the original pat and I love the name of this thing,
and you know it was created. You want to drop
this cool little fact by the name, the name of
the guy, Earl Tupper. Yeah I never knew that. Yeah,
I guess I didn't either. I didn't didn't think about it. No,
you think of Tupper wears nothing but tupper ware, and
there's no Tupper who invented It's crazy talk, right, Yeah? No,
(02:56):
there was a Tupper named Earl and that Tupper tup
tup for why yes, the Earl of Tupper he uh
he has a patent um call it, well had he
doesn't have it anymore. Uh. The e s tupper open
mouth container and non snap type of closure. Therefore this
by the way, Yeah, that's why I read it like that.
But I was explaining that to the everybody else. Do
(03:19):
they know me? This is going poorly? No, it's not so. Um.
Let's you want to talk a little bit about Tupper himself. Yeah.
He um was a bit of a reclusive figure, as
we'll find, but he was also like he was a
pretty sharp guy. I a grouch, I think, is it
possible way to describe him maybe a bit of a mad, smart, tinkering, grouchy. Um.
(03:46):
He disliked his father because he felt his father lacked ambition.
And this is when he was like ten, right, Um,
all you do is just go to the races and
lay around. He well, his parents owned a like a
farm of sorts, but I think I get the idea.
It was like kind of a harvest your own farm.
And this kid, little Earl Tupper, when he was like
ten twelve, he was like pitching the idea to to
(04:07):
build like a children's playground on the ground of this
pick your own farm for you know, to attract tourists
and stuff. And his dad was like, it sounds like
a lot of work. Totally, just go to school or something.
Get out of my hair. And Earl was like, you're
gonna pay for ignoring me. But he he was of
(04:27):
sharp contrast to his father, is what I'm trying to say.
He was very ambitious. Big tinker came up with a
lot of different patent ideas and apparently patents too. Yeah.
He uh, he had a book of inventions. Uh. There
was a better stocking guarter, which is a very sexy
thing for a child. To admit, right, UM, a better
way to remove a burst appendix. Yeah, yeah, that's for real. UM,
(04:52):
A dagger shaped comb to be clipped to the belt.
Um pants that wouldn't lose their crease. UM. One of
great import the customized cigarettes. I can't believe that didn't
catch on, Like for real, you know how Coca Cola
does those uh stupid cans and bottles now with names?
Oh now I understand. Yeah, there were cigarettes that said
like Sporty or the collegiate on the cigarette, so it
(05:14):
would have like your sports team like emblazoned on the side.
Maybe the problem is none of these inventions took off.
You know this guy literally well he could give his
inventions away, but like he almost literally couldn't give him
give them away. He he ended up manufacturing these things
(05:34):
and giving them away as like premiums for other stuff
like cigarettes and things like that. Yeah. So, UM he
starts a a tree uh doctor business, Tupper tree Doctors
that UM failed after um the depression, people were cutting
back on things like tree doctoring, so he went out
of business and in a very fortuitous move, went and
(05:57):
worked UM for Visca aid Plant, which is a division
of DuPont making plastics, right, and this is where things
kind of started taking shape. Yes, yes, yes, So basically
he gets into plastics and this town in Massachusetts that
he ended up in where the viscaloid plant was. He
(06:18):
was all over New England basically growing up, right, but
this particular town was kind of like a mad scientists
mecca where like all of this stuff is going on
in plastics, all these little tiny plastic manufacturing outfits are,
you know, start It's like a startup town for plastics
in like the thirties or forties, because they're like, we
have this new thing, like what all can we do
(06:39):
with it? Yeah? And which, by the way, plastic, especially polyethylene.
Polyethylene was invented by accident, and by the forties they
had still kind of they perfected the polyethylene or had
come out perfect, but they hadn't figured out quite how
to use it. And Earl Tupper was one of those
guys in the forties on the cutting edge of taking
(07:00):
plastic and figuring out how to mold him in the
right shape, how to keep him from being oily or
sticky or falling apart. When they were sitting out in
the sunlight or all this stuff. This guy is doing
all these tests and he ends up coming up thanks
to getting a block of this pure polyethylene from DuPont.
The good stuff, the good stuff, the uncut stuff. Um.
(07:20):
And he figures out how to make this bowl a
wonder lire bowl is what he calls it. Yeah, and um,
DuPont at the time didn't think that they could even
mold plastic. Like he was smarter than their guys because
he figured out how to do it. And um. Then
along with the design, the the patented tupperware seal that
(07:41):
made it so useful and famous, that made the what
sound that made the like the burping sound or tooting sound. Um.
He originally got that idea for the seal from paint cans, apparently,
the fact that you could turn a paint can upside
down and it wouldn't leak paint out all over the place.
And he said, I guess we can do us with food,
(08:02):
you know, yeah, like put food in here. It's sealed.
Look at the demonstration. It's upside down and I'm shaking
it and there's none of that gravy coming out. What right,
the grave is not coming out. I can drop this
bowl and it's not gonna break because everyone knows how
clumsy housewives are breaking stuff all over And the fact
that it um is that you burp it right and
(08:26):
it makes that sound, and you're basically preserving the food
for many, many days to come, which was huge because
a lot of the people who were um homemakers in
the forties and fifties, they had lived through the depression
and they remembered exactly what it was like. So preserving
food was a big deal. And so this thing was
like it's really easy to take for granted these days,
(08:50):
but it was very cutting edge technology. Well, these days
they have all those terrible cheap oh uh, I was
gonna say knockoffs are not knockoffs are major brands. But
you know those little cheap plastic containers that are sold,
they're they're not nearly the quality of Tupperware. No, Tupperware
started all that. Yeah, and this stuff is garbage. The
(09:10):
lids don't fit right ever, they break, they don't they
don't do anything that Tupperware did. Like I have a
Wonder bowl from the nineteen seventies that's still like perfect.
I mean, it's a little worn down, but it's still
like functions perfectly right. Well, it's a testament to tupperware
and that other garbage that stuff, Like I don't have
(09:30):
anything from last year. Well it's made and it was
made during a time of much more disposable thinking. You know.
At the time, it was like we're going to make
something now will last forever. Yeah, and I think they
still have a lifetime guarantees on everything. Yeah, Like you
could send in a tupperware piece from the sixties and they'll,
(09:52):
you know, if it's broken and it meets the requirements,
like you know, you didn't smash it with a hammer
or something. Um, because they can prove you. They'll give
you like credits or the equivalent of what you could
get today or something. It's like, well you paid for that.
But like let's see what the West Aid currency calculator
has to say about that. So, um, he formed upper Plastics. Uh.
(10:14):
Things did not take off though, um like he thought
they would. He put him in department stores and hardware
stores for some reason. Oh yeah, not a good place
to sell your tupperware. Yeah. I mean nowadays I can
see that, but back then you probably just went to
hardware stores for nails and hammers and stuff. Yeah, I'm
sure there are home goods and stuff too. It was
probably closer to a general store in the hardware stores today,
(10:36):
but even still, they weren't flying off the shelves at
the point they were not. UM. So what he did
was there was another timeline going on at the same time.
UM Stanley Home Products was this, uh, basically pioneered the
non door to door sales in favor of hosting a
(10:58):
party for lack of a better word, in home demonstrations
where you would gather people together. And it was a
guy named Norman Squires had um garnered a lot of
profits in this kind of sales, and they had working
for them a woman named Brownie Wise, right, and she
was selling all kinds of stuff for Stanley Home Products
(11:18):
and uh they called it the hostess group demonstration plan
and she was a great, great salesperson. Yeah. So these
people at Stanley Home Products basically found Tupperware on their
own and started selling it at these hostess parties. Right. Yeah,
she formed her own company called Tupperware Patio Parties. Oh
(11:39):
did she? Yeah, before she was hired. Before she was hired,
and she was selling so much of it that Earl
Tupper got in touch with her and was like, I
can't sell this stuff in stores like you're beating, like
department stores in New York City sales records she and
she yeah, she really was. She had a lot of charms.
She had. Um. She figured out that this burp thing
(12:01):
that was so essential and made this product so revolutionary,
right that, um, it wasn't like intuitive, you didn't just
understand how to work it, and so it wasn't helping sales,
which again seems weird today, but back then, you know,
people like, what is this weird colored thing? Right? Does
go together? And they were just banging them together in
(12:23):
the aisle of a hardware store crying. Um. They she
figured out that if you demonstrate this to people, especially
in like somebody's house or whatever and they've had a
couple of martinis and there's or Derv's, people are apt
to buy these things. And yeah, like you said, she
started out selling department stores hardware stores obviously. Um, and
(12:45):
she got hired on by Earl Tupper. She was in
Detroit at the time. I think I think she'd moved
down to Orlando when she was hired. Really by that point, Yeah,
she was from Beauford, Georgia, originally. Yeah, she was from Earl,
Georgia and uh ended up um being married and divorced,
which was pretty unusual at the time. And she was
a single mom. Yep, the little Jerry Wise. That's right.
(13:06):
She Unfortunately her husband was a violent drunk. I saw
that too, So that's not saying that, that's PBS taking
the fall for twe So she was only married to
him for about six years and then it was basically like,
I'm gonna make my own way. He only had an
eighth grade education, and she was killing it on the
sales front. Yeah, she she really was. So it took
before we get any further about Brownie Wise. Great name,
(13:29):
awesome name. Yeah, maybe not a band name, but a
great name. The brown the Brownie Wise would be a
good name. Or the the Brownie Wise Massacre. Yeah sure, yeah,
there you go, or Brownie Wise over drive. Both of
those anyway for one another. I guess the point that
I'm trying to get to. Let's take a break. Okay,
(14:05):
So Brownie Wise has her Tupperware patio Parties company out
selling stores. She gets hired on um they literally divide
the company into uh two sides, the Tupperware manufacturing up
in Massachusetts and then Tupperware home parties down in Orlando.
Down in Orlando, yeah, where she lives. Basically, Earl Tupper
(14:26):
comes to her in n and says, Hey, how would
you like to be one of like three female high
level executives in the United States in the world, I
would guess, And she said, that's sure, why not, I'll
do you a favor. And I said she was a
very interesting woman. If I didn't, I did in my
head and meant to say it, but she, Um, there's
(14:46):
apparently a movie coming out about her life, starring Sandra Bullock.
You did not say that, and I did see that,
So there you go. I couldn't find any information on
except that I think it's in uh in pre uh
pre production right now. Oh, I see, I think it's
going to happen. But um, yeah, I mean she she's
one of the great uh woman entrepreneurs that this country
(15:09):
has ever seen, the world has ever seen. Really, yeah,
because she took this tupper wear, which everyone except the
American public agreed was great. In ninety seven, the year
that Tupper invented this stuff, Time named it this amazing thing.
It won design awards. Yeah, she was on the first
woman on the cover of Business Week magazine, right right,
(15:29):
but even before she came along, everybody, especially in the
art world, in the design world, um said this this,
this stuff is great. But it was just sitting there languishing.
And then the brownie wise comes along and just turns
it into a blockbuster, like turns it into it an
American iconic brand, which it still is today. Yeah. And
what she realized, which is uh, was a stroke of genius,
(15:51):
was it's the nineteen fifties. The suburbs are happening post
World War two in a big way. Um, there's a
lot of the men that are that are homemakers, that
are I guess we could just say they were bored
and looking for something to do well. Plus also they
had very um, they had very real constrictions on their
(16:14):
time where like they're basically freedom of movement. They didn't
have cars, they didn't have things like this, they didn't
have a lot of ways to make money. Yeah. Well,
and again they were out in the suburbs for the
first time. It's not like many of these were connected
by subway or anything. That was still an inner city deal. Right. So,
But rather than view these places as vast like waste
lands of isolation. Brownie Wise said, no, these are like
(16:37):
little tiny social networks where people know and trust one
another and they're bored out of their skulls and they're
looking for ways to make money. Like so, not only
do you have a really great market to sell this to,
you have a really great workforce that's just sitting there idol.
And she said, how would you gals like to sell tupperware?
And they went, let's do this, that's right. And what
(16:59):
she did was came up with a system where and
you could work your way up the chain um from
sales all the way. Well, let's let's just detail it.
What you are is your consultant at first, which is
out there, you know, holding the party, hosting these parties.
We'll talk about everybody's chilling. Yeah, and then you can
work your up to manager if you organize a certain
(17:22):
number of parties, and then managers, uh, we're eventually recruiting
other women. So if you recruit enough women and increased sales,
then you could rise to distributor. And that was the
highest level you could attain at that point. Yes, you
could be a distributor. You have your own office, you
have your network of managers and then they manage the
(17:43):
consultants or the party throwers, party hosts, and UM basically
she started her own army of salespeople. Yeah, so Chuck
incentibized salespeople. Right now, there are two point nine million
people in the world selling tupperware. Every three seconds, there's
another Tupperware party. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, right,
(18:05):
So she she put together this workforce. And again it
was UM, this guy named Norman Squires who came up
with this idea that led to UM being a huge,
huge hit for Tupperware, but also later on avon Um
and Mary Kay and Pampered Chef and like all of these,
all of these brands that like are sold through hostess
(18:29):
parties basically get you in our house and get you drunk,
and so just just leave me a blank check basically.
But the it wasn't invented by Brownie Wise, but she
definitely perfected it for sure. So UM she tapped this workforce.
And one of the ways that she kept people excited
and loyal not just the fact that they could rise
(18:51):
throughout this hierarchy UM in the tupperware industry, but there
there was also like this thing that she created called
the Jubilee every year down Orlando. It's a big company party,
it was. And they would just pull out all the stops.
Like they would bury fur coats, they would bury blenders.
One of the buyers once said that he bought a
(19:12):
hundred thousand blenders once for the Jubilee. They would just
bring all these Tupperware sales associates and just basically throw
them a party for a few days and let them
just win free stuff and have a great time. And
when you say, Barry, I think we should explain, because
it sounds really weird. They would bury these prizes and
people would go and dig them up. Right. It wasn't
like you can't have this. Look at what you can't have.
(19:34):
We're burying It just sound you're like, they'd bury fur coats,
they'd bury anything that moved. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but
it was all part of the fun. Apparently they lost
a lot of them too. Yeah. Years later, um at
the at the Tupperware headquarters in Orlando, they went to
dig a pond and they found a bunch of the
prizes that had never been found. Yes, some say there's
still fur coats buried all over Orlando. By the illuminati. Right. So, um,
(20:01):
those are the big jubilee parties, a big company parties,
great for morale. Um. The hostess uh themselves or the
consultants would um, they would make percentage. They'd basically make
a cut what they were able to sell, as well
as get prizes. Um like these really neat prizes. And
the more parties you hosted, the better the prizes would get.
(20:23):
So it's like it's like the wild West. It's the
heyday for these women. They're like earning their own money
for a change. They're getting these great prizes. They're feeling
great about themselves. They're not bored any longer. And their
husbands were like, WHOA, what's going on here? Give me
that money you made? Yeah, exactly. And things were so
successful with this model that that was their only sales
(20:45):
model up until the late nineteen eighties. Right. You couldn't
even buy the stuff in stores. No, he just stopped.
It wasn't even worth the money or effort to distribute
his stories. They just did it through parties and home parties.
Thank you, Brownie Wise. Right, so um, in like you said,
in eighty they started selling it through UM catalogs. I
(21:06):
guess uh yeah, I think they cat I've seen like
older catalogs from like the fifties and sixties, So I
don't know what that means. Maybe over the phone, you
saw Tupperware one catalog. Yeah, it's on our it's on
the podcast page for this episode. There's a link to
this kind of design layout and it has some catalogs.
So it must have been like ordered by phone. Oh yeah,
(21:27):
maybe so. And then just about ten years later in
Tupperware had their first website, which e commerce in that
was fairly forward thinking. Yeah, that's true, you know. Yeah,
um so this caught like wildfire. Today you can it's
not just like an American institution. There are Tupperware parties,
(21:48):
like we said, at the rate of one every three seconds,
and more than a hundred countries around the world. I
had no idea that Tupperware was that popular in like
Asia and India, and they said half a million, more
than half a million every year in France alone. Yeah,
of Tupperware sales are outside of the US these days. Yeah,
(22:09):
and it's a I mean like it's got it's moving
like gangbusters. Last I saw I was trading at like
sixty three dollars a share, which is down from like
a hundred in December. Maybe, UM like it's it's a
really set company again these days, like it's been able
to just be on the brink of utter irrelevance when
it finds a new market, when it figures out a
(22:31):
new way to to sell, when it figures out a
new product, like currently right now in China, um Tupperware
is making tons of cash selling a thousand dollar water filter,
and they're doing it by traveling from town to town
and setting up these in home demonstrations or public demonstrations
and showing how to do it. So they're like taking
(22:51):
the Tumperware model that Brownie Wise like really perfected and
and figuring out how it best works and cultures around
the world. Yeah, I know. They make um all so
like h depending on your country and what they eat,
like certain shaped UM containers, right like round bread containers
for non in India. How about that? So what happened
to Brownie Wise? I guess she retired, was thanked, carried
(23:14):
out on everyone's shoulders, and lived a great fulfilled life
until her death. Right, Well, we're gonna tell you right
after this break, all right, Josh, let's fast forward to UM.
(23:46):
The Tupperware. Business is booming, Brownie Wise is a bit
of a celebrity. The twist is going like Gangbusters? Was it? Probably? Okay?
People are still twist in the night away? I mean
what was that like? Probably started three years. Sure there
was some squares still twisting. Yeah, they weren't doing the
(24:07):
mashed potato yet. No, I think that was a little later. Okay. Um,
so business is booming, Brownie Wise is killing it. She's
a celebrity. Earl Tupper um starts to get a little
jealous over the years. It's as simple as that. Yeah.
As much as he liked didn't seek or want the limelight,
he was still jealous that Brownie Wise people thought that
(24:27):
she was Tupperware and that she started the company um
and started selling like I can sell anything like this.
So she didn't say that in the media said she could.
She could have done this with any brand. She's that great.
Well she could, And Earl Tupper wanted to be like, well, no,
I mean my product that I invented is you know
(24:48):
a big part of this, if not the thing. I'm
Earl Tupper right, so he um he apparently Also she
stopped kind of cow towing to him quite as much. Um,
but I got a lot great for while. Yeah, and
again he had said to their PR department and to
any media interviewer, like, yes, this lady is the face
(25:08):
of Tupperware. Treater, is such, promoter, is such, And he,
just like you said, ended up getting jealous. I didn't
like that she wasn't cows outing to him any longer,
and in said you're fired. Yeah. He The story I
read was that he wanted to sell the company and
cash in, and that he didn't think and was advised
(25:29):
that it would be really hard to sell a company
with a woman in such a prominent position on the board.
And so he, uh, like you said, just unceremoniously get
rid of her, gave her one year salary. It was
like thirty grand zero stock in this company that she
had built almost from the ground up. Yeah, or help
build at least. And um, I gotta say that was
(25:51):
her You know, that was her mistake. She should have
gotten some stock along the way. Yeah, I guess you know,
she's too busy selling and jam, I mean and exactly
she was imagined thirty five grand a year was a
pretty good salary at the point. You want me to
look it up, I will you can. So she got
that small pay out. She went um and what he
(26:12):
said to her was is that there were some accounting
errors in the previous year. She wouldn't come to Massachusetts
to talk to him about it, and sort of dug
In says that she said that she had gotten sicker,
injured and couldn't leave Florida. He finally went down to Florida,
um and basically said that, you know, these jubilees are
too expensive. The landscaping you've done here in Florida, the
(26:35):
company headquarters is too expensive. You're spending too much money
on clothes. Uh. And we own all that stuff, We
own all your clothing. What well, I mean that's I
don't know if he actually took it, but he basically
was like, you know, she paid for all that stuff
through the company as she should have, you know, to
keep up appearances. But um, yeah, that was it for her.
She started a small company called Cinderella Cosmetics that folded
(26:59):
after a year and sort of faded into obscurity. So
then um Earl Tupper uh sold out that the next
year I think sixteen million. Yeah, he sells out for
sixteen million dollars. Nice. Cash to rex All Drug Company,
which was eventually absorbed by Kraft, who apparently now owns Tupperware.
(27:21):
I think maybe it's the parent company. Um and yeah,
sixteen million in nineteen fifty eight. It's not too bad
for a boy who couldn't get his parents to build
a playground on the family pick your own whatever farm.
Did you find out if she thirty five grand was
a good salary? Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was like
two hundred and I think thirty two thousand dollars back then. Yeah,
(27:45):
that's good. It's not bad, I mean especially for a executive. Yeah. Um.
But he sold the whole thing for sixteen million, gave
her one year salary, moved to Costa Rica, bought in island,
announced as US citizenships so we didn't have to pay
any taxes on. Got divorced before all that, right, and
uh said, sion are everybody, I'm going to Costa Rica
(28:07):
to buy an island and keep a note pain in
my pocket. So anytime an idea for a new invention hits,
I'll have it. Yeah. And just like probably you know,
eight pineapples on his island. Yeah. He died in three
in Costa Rica. Uh, seventy six and she died in
nine and um, Tupperware has not gone out of fashion.
(28:31):
It's it's been featured, uh starting in what year was it,
I guess when they first came out at the Museum
of Modern Art, and then again in two thousand eleven.
I think I even saw this exhibit. In fact, I'm
almost positive I did, because it was about just industrial
design and things, and there's Tupperware all over again because
of its gorgeous of course, now you know that fifties
(28:54):
era retro design. The original line that tupper Um released
is called the Millionaire line, and it came in six colors,
five pastels and one white, right, yellow, blue, green, orange,
and pink. And they're really pretty. Like if you look
at a set of these things and a good condition,
they're gorgeous. He went on to the Plastics Hall of Fame,
(29:18):
UM and now like this stuff from the fifties and sixties,
you can get some decent money on eBay for that stuff,
you know, because it still works and people love that
retro look. Did you know that he refused refused to
have any um any pet bowls designed. He thought it
was tupper Ware was too good for pets to eat
(29:40):
out of. What a jerk. See, I was all on
board until that. Actually I wasn't on board. I was
off board when I found out that he fired Brownie Wise.
Yeah he and then was like, Okay, I've got some money.
See you later. Family moving to Costa Rica. Would you
be funny if he went down and started a cult
with this slinking guy? Um? So Tupperware stayed pretty much
(30:03):
the same until when they UM a designer named Morrison
Cousins basically kind of redesigned for for the new era. Yeah.
He he was UM already a VP I guess at Tupperware,
and he was. He decided that it was a little difficult.
He had an eighty two or eighty one year old
(30:23):
mother at the time eighty seven year old mother at
the time when he was charged with redesigning the Tupperware line,
and UM he from that viewpoint, he redesigned it to
make it easier for UM the aged to use. Right, So,
like that burping lid that you had to like really
kind of have some decent hand strength to put on.
(30:44):
He figured out a way around it by UM using
flaps that opened and close to release the air didn't
require quite as much hand strength. Um, the lids were
made in contrast and close to the bulls, so if
you had a low visibility low vision, not visibility, that's
totally different. If you were wearing all camouflage at the time,
(31:06):
you'd be able to find the lid and the bowl
that go together pretty easy. So he yeah, he made
them easier for old books. Yep. And he was the
guy who brought it online. He did a lot of
good stuff apparently with it. He also took the brand.
I thought this is cool, and I would love to
see this on video because I'll bet it's just so
(31:29):
bizarre and surreal to watch. They broadcast a series of
live temperware parties on some home shopping channel in the
early nineties. That was probably the first home shopping experience.
You know, I think those were around in the eighties.
I think home shopping was already established. When did they
do this early nineties? Oh? I thought you said he
did it like in the sixties. No, no, no, no,
(31:51):
we should do one on home shopping. I'll bet that
has an interesting, weird history. You think I'll look into
I let you know, Okay, my mom's into it, man, QBC.
So did we talk about how to throw a tupperware party.
Yeah we did, We sure did. Okay, did we talk
about tupperware drag parties? We did not? We should, Yeah,
(32:13):
because there's more than one. Yeah, there's well, there's one
person in particular, a guy named Chris Anderson who performs
in drag as Dixie Longate and um sells like a
million dollars worth of Tupperware in the process, Like he
gets paid to perform, Like you gotta pay forty bucks
just to a person just to have I guess he
(32:36):
still does house parties, but he literally does like tours
and does like off Broadway shows and stuff. Now right,
But the whole thing is I mean real tupperware party
where like you can buy tupperware and like he's demonstrating
the tupper wearing. He's kind of giving his own take
on what it's useful for. But he's not the only
um drag show in the country selling tupperware, of course,
(32:57):
not apparently. UH drag queen named Aunt Barbara up in
Long Island is was at least in two thous twelve,
the number one salesperson in North America for Tupperware. It
all makes sense when you think about it so two
fifty grand worth of Tupa in one year. Like the
kitch of the Drag show, the kitch of Tupperware parties,
(33:18):
it all sort of goes hand in hand. And Um,
I went to the website of Dixie Longate and he
has a pretty interesting bio. I have three kids, Winona,
Dwayne and absorbing Junr. It's all made up, I think,
I think maybe, although you never know. But yeah. Now
(33:38):
he has solo stand up shows, um and a recent
theatrical show called never Wear a tube top while Riding
a mechanical bowl and sixteen other things I learned while
I was drinking last Thursday. And apparently that is selling
out venues. It's basically that's selling out venues. We're not,
but that is don't be better. We will one day.
(34:01):
If we did it in drag we'd probably well, no,
that's not true either, one day chuck. Uh wow, that's
a weird way to end this. Yeah, I think it's perfect. Um.
I thought I had something else, but I guess I don't. Oh,
yes I do. PBS did a great documentary called Tupperware
with an exclamation point. It's got a whole website on
(34:21):
online and you can watch parts of the documentary, if
not the whole thing. Yeah, and look for the Sandra
Bullock the Brownie Wise story coming to a theater near
you in a couple of years. Nice job, you said
a theater near you. You just said coming to a
theater near you. That's like wow? Did you ever think
you would grow up to say that like in public? Sure? Okay, Well,
(34:46):
if you want to know more about tupper ware, you
can type that one word and the search part how
stuff works dot com? And uh, since I said search parts,
time for a listener mail and they call this the
strisand effect? Have you ever heard of this? Hello? Josh,
Chuck and Jerry really enjoyed the podcast on Internet censorship.
Although I was disturbed that s OP three oh three exists,
(35:11):
one thing not mentioned that I thought was relevant is
when individuals attempt to censor specific things from their own
life and the resulting fallout that occurs. In two thousand three,
and I remember this happening. Actually, a picture of Barbra
Streisand's home in Malibu appeared in a publicly available collection
of over twelve thousand photos of California Coastline. The collection
(35:31):
was documenting coastal erosion and not related to news paparazzi
or tabloids or anything like that. But Streisand's lawyers filed
a fifty million dollar lawsuit against the photographer, asking the
picture to be taken down for privacy reasons. Before stories
of the lawsuit hit the press, the photo of the
home had only been downloaded six times, two of which
(35:52):
were by her attorneys. During the following month, after the
whole thing became a news story, more than four hundred
thousand people visited the website. Uh. They even coined the
term at the strice end effect an attempt to really
got out of hand for her. Yeah, I did I
remember this blew up in her face. An attempt at
censoring or removing something from the Internet results and said
(36:12):
thing being seen and reported on much more than if
the person requesting it be removed had simply let it
fade into obscurity. Thanks for the podcast. Also possibly a
shout out to my wife Emily, who is nearly as
addicted to stuff you should know as I am nearly
And that is from Brenton Krauss in uh mid Hudson Valley,
New York, USA. So Emily and get on it. So
(36:34):
you're equally as addicted, and thank you Britton for being
fully addicted. Yeah to the brim, I guess uh. If
you want to get in touch with us and talk
to us about Tupperware or um whatever, you can tweet
to us right at s y s K podcast. Josh's
(36:55):
manning that station. You can go on to our awesome
Facebook page courtesy of Chuckers I'm in that station, Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email. We both get those. They come direct
to us to uh stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com and hang out with us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff
(37:17):
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.