Everyone knows that a good party can’t last forever, and such is the case for Tupperware, the iconic food storage brand, whose leadership announced on Wednesday that the company had voluntarily initiated Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Laurie Ann Goldman, the company’s president and CEO, assured customers in a statement that they would continue producing “the high-quality products they love and trust throughout this process,” but noted Tupperware had been “severely impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment.”
“As a result, we explored numerous strategic options and determined this is the best path forward. This process is meant to provide us with essential flexibility as we pursue strategic alternatives to support our transformation into a digital-first, technology-led company better positioned to serve our stakeholders,” added Goldman.
Regardless of how exactly the company moves forward, this development seems to officially mark the end of an era for Tupperware, and for America at-large — one in which tightly-sealed plastic containers offered pastel skirt-clad housewives an opportunity for entrepreneurship within their post-war suburban households. Tupperware parties, which flourished in the 1950s and ‘60s, were an ingenious blend of social gathering and sales pitch, a precursor to modern direct-selling and multi-level marketing strategies. There, women would gather at the seller’s house for an afternoon of snacks, conversation and a demonstration of the brand’s newest plastic containers.
In the ensuing decades, the allure of the Tupperware party dimmed as cultural shifts transformed both the workforce and the marketplace. More women began working outside the home and kitchen, while at the same time, big-box stores and supermarkets with increasingly expansive selections of homeware offered more efficient ways to buy household goods (it’s also worth noting the brand didn’t begin selling in Target until 2022). Then, the internet came and with it, the advent of online shopping. The exclusivity and personal touch that once defined Tupperware parties were no match for the convenience and speed of modern click-to-shop buying, leading to their gradual decline.
In their bankruptcy petition, Tupperware reported more than $1.2 billion in total debts and $679.5 million in total assets, while the data gathering and visualization platform Statista reports global sales of Tupperware have declined by more than 50% since peaking at $2.67 billion in 2013.
However, while Tupperware, as we once knew it — rooted in its iconic in-home parties and pioneering sales strategies — has faded into the background of contemporary consumerism, its presence in our cultural imagination remains undiminished. This enduring relevance is largely thanks to its continued representation in pop culture, from period pieces like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” to more anachronistic indie gems like “Napoleon Dynamite.”
Sometimes the inclusion of Tupperware in pop culture is used to simply set the stage for the time period being represented; for instance, era-appropriate Tupperware is featured in the kitchens in both the second season of the Max original “Julia,” set in the 1960s, and Apple Original series “Lessons in Chemistry,” which takes place in the early 50s and 60s. Often, though, it’s meant to say something about the character using or selling it.
For instance, in the fourth season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” it’s 1960 and Midge is struggling with her comedy career. In a bid to navigate her financial difficulties, she turns to selling Tupperware, using the parties as a means to both support her family and regain a semblance of control over her life. It’s a turn that represents a kind of push-pull moment for the titular character. While being a housewife — the kind who eschewed a housekeeper to make her own brisket, which she frequently trots out to make an impression — is interwoven with Midge’s identity, even her on-stage identity, will that end up being her only identity?
This is a plot point that’s similarly visited in the Netflix adult animated series “F is for Family,” in which Laura Dern voices Sue Murphy, a beleaguered, but ambitious 1970s housewife in the fictional town of Rustvale, Pennsylvania. After having an emotional breakdown after feeling like she’s been reduced to nothing but a wife and mother, she begins selling Plast-a-Ware, this universe’s play on Tupperware.
(This moment seems like the right time for noting that Tupperware’s legacy will also likely endure well beyond our lifetimes, thanks to the good-natured vigilance of its legal team in protecting the Tupperware trademark. Many food writers and editors, myself included, have received amicable cease-and-desist letters for casually referring to “Tupperware” when we meant to say simply “plastic food storage container.” While the fact that these terms have become synonymous speaks volumes about Tupperware’s long standing dominance in the industry, a food writer I recently texted about this news quipped, “I feel like I should send their legal team a fruit basket after all we’ve been through together.”)
Sue has bigger ambitions than just selling Plast-a-Ware; she wants to design it, too. After developing a product for a plastic lettuce spinner, Sue takes it to the company founder, Henrietta Van Horn, only for Henrietta to steal it as a way to be taken seriously by the male Plast-a-Ware executives who have essentially rendered her a powerless figurehead for the company. Henrietta is tired of living off residual sales from the comfort of her living room. She wants back in the action, but sidelines Sue in the process (who then ends up getting pregnant with her fourth child, putting more strain on her professional ambitions).
This is part of what makes Tupperware’s cultural symbolism so interesting and multi-layered. While the product offered women a way to participate in the labor market, it also reinforced the idea that their place was in the home. And while Tupperware represented innovation, it also became a harbinger of multi-level marketing, a business model that many argue takes advantage of participants, often promising more than it can deliver.
Even in “Napoleon Dynamite,” Uncle Rico’s plastic food storage container hustle isn’t about domestic bliss; it’s about desperation, clinging to the last vestiges of the American Dream. Even though there’s something deeply sad about watching the character schlep plastic containers from house to house with a canned sales pitch at the ready (“You see, this ain’t your run-of-the-mill ‘crapper-ware,’ these are serious Nupont fiber-woven bowls”) one also can’t help really but root for him to get a win because his efforts are earnest.
Still, for all its complications, Tupperware endures as a symbol of a certain time and place — of women in ’50s kitchens, of suburbia, of the post-war economic boom. Its omnipresence in pop culture reflects its deeper role as a metaphor for American life.
And it’s not alone. Other household products have similarly transcended their utilitarian roles to become pop culture icons. The red Solo cup, for instance, is shorthand for parties and youthful recklessness, cemented into the collective American consciousness by innumerable college comedies and coming-of-age stories. Post-it Notes, meanwhile, symbolize the minutiae of modern life, from Carrie Bradshaw’s infamous Post-it breakup in “Sex and the City” to the near-constant use of sticky notes as visual shorthand for cluttered thoughts and overwhelmed minds in films and TV shows. These products serve as cultural shorthand, evoking far more than their intended purpose.
In the end, Tupperware’s true staying power may not lie in its products, but in what those products have come to represent. Long after the parties stop, the idea of Tupperware — and all the ideals it encapsulates — will persist in the American imagination.
