Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Tupperware Works

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, friends. Do you want to know how Tupperware works all over again? You're in the right spot because it is throwback time to May 28th, 2015, how Tupperware works. This is a good one.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. So this is Stuff You Should Know. Burp. Have you ever heard of Tupperware burp? Yeah, sort of. I mean, it doesn't sound like a burp. It's just sort of like... Can you emulate one? Well, it's just sort of like air, just sort of... It doesn't sound like a burp.

It sounds like a toot. Yeah, something different. Yeah, but I don't think you could call it a Tupperware fart because it probably wouldn't sell as much. Well, even a burp is a little, you know... Yeah. Okay, so I guess I have heard one before when I was a kid, but I thought there was a burp or something like that, or do you remember that cartoon? It might have been like a...

What was the... Oh, droopy. I think it might have been a droopy cartoon. Some sort of tech savory cartoon where they had a machine that burped radishes. I think it was like the kitchen of the future one. Great cartoon. That's what I assumed the Tupperware thing was like. Yeah, I was a big droopy fan. That's what I was missing out. Nope. It's just a little air being expelled.

But it was a very, very important bit of air. Sure. Because Chuck, at the time, that Tupperware came out, women were using like basically a pot that they cooked something in, maybe a bowl. And putting a shower cap over it and storing it in the ice box. You know what they call that? Primitive? Yeah. That's primitive food storage.

It sounds like a tuk-tuk would have done something like that. Men and women in the 1940s. Right. Except he would have used like some sort of Madagascar type animal pelt. Sure. From the movie Madagascar. No, not Madagascar. Ice Age, that's what I'm thinking of.

Ice Age. I haven't seen the one. They're very similar, set in like different climbs and different time periods. I've never seen them either. Different animal protagonists. I just, I can get a lot from commercials. Yeah. I hear you.

So yeah, Tupperware, let's talk about it. The original patent, I love the name of this thing. And you know, it was created, you want to drop this cool little fact by the name of the guy? Earl Tupper. Yeah. Never knew that. Yeah, I guess I didn't either. I didn't think about it.

No, you think of Tupperware as nothing but Tupperware and there's no Tupper who invented it. It's crazy talk. Right. Yeah, no, there was a Tupper named Earl and that Tupper Tupperware. Yes, the Earl of Tupper. He has a patent called, well had, he doesn't have it anymore. The ES Tupper open mouth container and non snap type of closure, therefore. This is 1947 by the way.

Yeah, that's why I read it like that. Right. But I was explaining that to everybody else. How they know me. This is going poorly. No, it's not. So you want to talk a little bit about Tupper himself? Yeah, he was a bit of a reclusive figure as we'll find.

But he was also like, he's a pretty sharp guy. A grouch I think is a possible way to describe him maybe. A bit of a mad, smart, tinkering grouch. Yeah. He disliked his father because he felt his father lacked ambition and this is when he was like 10. All you do is just go to the races and lay around. Well, his parents owned 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 10, 11, 12, he was like pitching the idea to build like a children's playground on the grounds of this pick your own farm for, you know, to attract tourists and stuff. And his dad was like, sounds like a lot of work. Just go to school or something, get out of my hair. Pipe down. And Earl was like, you're going to pay for ignoring me.

But he was a 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 had a book of inventions that was a better stocking garter, which is a very sexy thing for a child to invent. Right. A better way to remove a burst appendix.

Yeah. Yeah. That's for real. A dagger shaped comb to be clipped to the belt. Pants that wouldn't lose their crease. These are of great import. Yeah. The customized cigarettes.

I can't believe that didn't catch on like for real. You know how Coca-Cola does those stupid cans and bottles now with name. Oh, now I understand. Yeah. There were cigarettes that said like sporty or the collegiate on the cigarette. Gotcha. So it would have like your sports team like emblazoned on the side. Ah, maybe.

Huh. The problem is none of these inventions took off. No, this guy literally, well, he could give his inventions away, but like he almost literally couldn't give them away. He ended up manufacturing these things and giving them away is like premiums for other stuff like cigarettes and things like that. Yeah. So he starts a tree doctor business, Tupper Tree doctors that failed after the depression

people were cutting back on things like tree doctoring. Right. So he went out of business and in a very fortuitous move went and worked for viscoloid plant, which is a division of DuPont making plastics. Right. And this is where things kind of started taking shape. Yes. For what would to come.

Yes. Yes. So basically he gets into plastics and this town in Massachusetts that he ended up in where the viscoloid plant was. Yeah, he was all over New England basically growing up. Right. This particular town was kind of like a mad scientist's mecca where like all of this stuff is going on in plastics.

All these little tiny plastic manufacturing outfits are, you know, it's like a startup town for plastics in like the thirties or forties. Well, because they're like, we have this new thing. Like what all can we do with it? Yeah. And which by the way plastic, especially polyethylene, polyethylene was invented by accident in 1898. And by the forties they had still kind of,

they perfected the polyethylene or it had come out perfect. Yeah. 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 plastics and figuring out how to mold them in the right shape, how to keep them from being oily or sticky or falling apart when they were sitting out in the sunlight or all this stuff. This guy's 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. And he figures out how to make this bowl, a wonderlier bowl is what he calls it. Yeah. And 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 then along with the design, the patented Tupperware seal that made it so useful and famous.

That made the what sound? That made the burping sound or tooting sound. 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 this with food. You know? Yeah.

Like put food in here. It's sealed. Look at the demonstration. It's upside down. I'm shaking it and there's none of that gravy coming out. What? Right. The gravy's not coming out.

I can drop this bowl and it's not going to break because everyone knows how clumsy housewives are. Oh, sure. Just breaking stuff all over. And the fact that it is that you burp it, right? Yeah. And it makes that sound and you're basically preserving the food for many, many days to come. Sure. Which is huge because a lot of the people who were homemakers in the 40s and 50s,

they had lived through the depression and they remembered exactly what it was like. So preserving food was a big deal. Oh, yeah. And so this thing was like, it's really easy to take for granted these days, but it was very cutting-edge technology. Well, these days they have all those terrible cheapo, I was going to say knockoffs or not knockoffs, or major brands, but you know those little cheap plastic containers that are sold, they're not nearly the quality of Tupperware.

No, Tupperware started all that. Yeah. And this stuff is garbage. The lids don't fit right ever. They break. They don't do anything that Tupperware did. Like I have a Wonder Bowl from the 1970s. Oh, do you really?

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 itself. Yeah. And that other garbage, that's stuff like I don't have anything from last year. Well, it's made, and it was made during a time of much more disposable thinking. Sure.

You know, at the time it was like, we're going to make something that will last forever. Yeah. And I think they still have a lifetime guarantees on everything. Do they really? Yeah. Like you could send in a Tupperware piece from the 60s, and they'll, you know, if it's broken and it meets the requirements, like, you know, you didn't smash it with a hammer or something, because they can prove you.

I want a new one. They'll give you like a credits or the equivalent of what you could get today or something. Huh. It's like, well, you paid 85 cents for that. They're like, you're right. Let's see what the West Egg currency calculator has to say about that. So he formed Tupperplastics. Things did not take off though, like he thought they would.

He put them in department stores. And hardware stores for some reason. Oh, really? 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 than the hardware stores today, but even still they weren't flying off the shelves at the point. They were not. So what he did was there was another timeline going on at the same time. Stanley Home Products was this basically pioneered the non-dortador sales in favor of hosting a party, for lack of a better word, in-home demonstrations where you gather people together.

And it was a guy named Norman Squires had 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. And 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, did she? Yeah. Before she was hired. Before she was hired. Wow. 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. Yeah. Sales records. And she, yeah, she really was. She had a lot of charm. She had, she figured out that this burp thing that was so essential and made this product so revolutionary. Right?

That 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. Right. But back then, you know, people were like, what is this weird colored thing? Right. That supposedly holds food.

How does this go together? And they were just banging them together in the aisle of a hardware store and crying. 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 hors d'oeuvres. Yeah. People are apt to buy these things. And yeah, like you said, she started out selling department stores, hardware stores, obviously. And she got hired on by Earl Tupper.

Yeah. She was in Detroit at the time. I think she'd moved down to Orlando when she was hired. Oh, really? By that point? Yeah. She was from Buford, Georgia originally. Yeah.

She was from rural Georgia and ended up being married and divorced, which was pretty unusual at the time. And she was a single mom. Yep. To little Jerry Wise. That's right. She, fortunately, her husband was a violent drunk. I saw that too. So that's not saying that.

That's PBS taking the fall for that one. Yeah. So she was only married to him for about six years. And then was basically like, I'm going to make my own way. Right. She only had an eighth grade education and she was killing it on the sales front. Yeah, she really was. So Chuck, before we get any further about Brownie Wise.

Great name. Awesome name. Yeah. Maybe not a band name, but a great name. The Brownie Wise would be a good name. Or the Brownie Wise Massacre. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

There you go. Or Brownie Wise Overdrive. Yeah, both of those. Anyway. Good for one another. I guess the point that I'm trying to get to is let's take a break. OK. So, I'm here to help you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop

running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Brownie Wise has her Tupperware patio parties company outselling stores. She gets hired on. They literally divide the company into 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 comes to her in 1951 and says, hey, how would you like to be one of three female high-level executives in the United States, in the world, I would guess. And she said, sure, why not?

I'll do you a favor. And I said she was a very interesting woman. If I didn't, I did my head and meant to say it. But there's 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 it except that. I think it's in pre-production right now.

Oh, I see. I think it's going to happen. But yeah, I mean, she's one of the great woman entrepreneurs that this country's ever seen, the world has ever seen, really. Yeah, because she took this Tupperware, which everyone except the American public agreed was great. In 1947, 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. But even before she came along, everybody, especially in the art world and the design world, said 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 an American iconic brand, which it still is today. Yeah, and what she realized, which was a stroke of genius, was it's the 1950s, the suburbs are happening post-World War II in a big way.

There's a lot of women 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 real constrictions on their time. 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, but rather than view these places as vast like wastelands of isolation, Brownie Wise said, no, these are like 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 idle.

And she said, how would you gals like to sell Tupperware? And they went, let's do this. That's right, and what she did was came up with a system where you could work your way up the chain from sales all the way up. Well, let's just detail it. What you are is your consultant at first, which is out there, you know. Holding the parties. Hosting these parties.

Which we'll talk about, everybody's chill out. Yeah, and then you can work your way up to manager if you organize a certain number of parties. And then managers were eventually recruiting other women. So, if you recruit enough women and increase 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 consultants or the party throwers, party hosts. And basically, she started her own army of salespeople. Yeah, so Chuck right now. Incentivize salespeople. Right now, there are 2.9 million people in the world selling Tupperware.

Every 3 seconds, there's another Tupperware party. Yeah, but we're getting ahead of ourselves, right? Yeah. So, she put together this workforce. And again, it was this guy named Norman Squires who came up with this idea. Sure. That led to it being a huge, huge hit for Tupperware.

But also later on, Avon and Mary Kay. Sure. And Pampered Chef. And all of these brands that are sold through hostess parties. Basically, get you in our house, get you drunk, and sell you things when your resistance is low. Just leave me a blank check. Yeah, basically.

But it wasn't invented by Brownie Wise, but she definitely perfected it for sure. So, she tapped this workforce. And one of the ways that she kept people excited and loyal, not just the fact that they could rise throughout this hierarchy, in the Tupperware industry. Yeah. But there was also this thing that she created

called the Jubilee every year down in Orlando. It was a big company party. It was. And they would just pull out all the stops. Like they would bury fur coats. Yeah. They would bury blenders. One of the buyers once said that he bought 100,000 blenders

once for this Jubilee. Wow. 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. Yeah. And when you say bury, I think we should explain because that 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. We're burying it. It just sounded funny. You're like, they'd bury fur coats. They'd bury anything that moved.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, it was all part of the fun. Apparently, they lost a lot of them too. Oh, did they? Yeah.

Years later 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. Yeah. Some say there's still fur coats buried all over Orlando Yeah. by the Illuminati. Right.

So, those are the big Jubilee parties, the big company parties. Great for morale. Yeah. The hostess themselves or the consultants would, they would make percentage, they'd basically make a cut they were able to sell as well as get prizes. Yeah. Like, these really neat prizes and the more parties you hosted,

the better the prizes would get. So, it's like, it's like the Wild West. It's the heyday for these women. Right. 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 are like, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? Yeah. Give me that money you made. Yeah, exactly. I'm the man. And things were so successful with this model that that was their only sales model up until the late 1980s. 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 it to stores. They just did it through parties, in-home parties. That's right. Thank you, brownie-wise. All right. So, like you said, in 1988, they started selling it through catalogs, I guess?

Yeah, catalogs. I've seen older catalogs from like the 50s and 60s. So, I don't know what that means. Maybe over the phone. You saw Tupperware one? Yeah. Catalogs? Yeah, 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, maybe so. And then just about 10 years later in 1999, Tupperware had their first website, which e-commerce in 1999, that was fairly forward-thinking. Yeah, that's true. You know? Yeah.

So, this caught like wildfire today. It's not just like an American institution, there are Tupperware parties, like we said, at the rate of one every three seconds, in more than 100 countries around the world. I had no idea that Tupperware was that popular in like Asia and India. Oh, yeah. And they said half a million, more than half a million every year in France alone. Yeah, 91% of Tupperware sales are outside of the US these days. Crazy.

Yeah. And it's moving like gangbusters, last I saw I was trading at like $63 a share, which is down from like 100 in December maybe. Oh, wow. Like 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 new way to sell, when it figures out a new product. Like currently right now in China Tupperware is making tons of cash selling $1,000 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 the Tupperware model that brownie wise like really perfected and figuring out how it best works in cultures around the world. Yeah, I know they make also like depending on your country and what they eat, like certain shaped containers. Right, like round bread containers for naan in India. Yeah, how about that?

So what happened to brownie wise? I guess she retired, was thanked, carried out on everyone's shoulders and lived a great fulfilled life until her death, right? Well, we're going to tell you right after this break. Oh, bro. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Josh, let's fast forward to 1958. 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 twisting the night away?

Yeah. I mean, what was that, like 1955? It probably started three years, sure. There were some squares still twisting. Yeah, they weren't doing the mashed potato yet. No, I think that was a little later. Okay. So business is booming.

Brownie Wise is killing it. She's a celebrity. Earl Tupper starts to get a little jealous over the years. It's as simple as that. Yeah, as much as he didn't seek or want the limelight, he was still jealous that Brownie Wise, people thought that she was Tupperware and that she started the company and started selling like, I can sell anything like this.

So she didn't say that? Well, no. Some in the media said she could have done this with any brand. She's that great. Yeah, well, she could have. And Earl Tupper wanted to be like, well, no. I mean, my product that I invented is a big part of this, if not the thing. I'm Earl Tupper.

Right. So he apparently also, she stopped kind of cow-towing to him quite as much. It got on great for a while. Yeah. And again, he had said to their PR department and to any media interviewer, like, yes, this lady is the face of Tupperware. Treater is such. Promoter is such.

And he just, like you said, ended up getting jealous. Didn't like that she wasn't cow-towing to him any longer. And in 1958 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 that it would be really hard to sell a company with a woman in such a prominent position on the board. Oh, yeah.

And so he, like you said, just unceremoniously got rid of her, gave her a one-year salary. It's like 30, 35 grand. Zero stock. Yeah. And this company that she had built almost from the ground up. Yeah, or help build at least. And I got to say that was her, you know, that was her mistake.

She should have gotten some stock along the way. Yeah, I guess so. You know. She's too busy selling and... Yeah, I mean, exactly. She was, I imagine 35 grand a year was a pretty good salary at the point in 1958. You want me to look it up? I will.

You can. Okay. So she got that small payout. She went and what he 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 sick or injured and couldn't leave Florida. He finally went down to Florida and basically said that, you know, these jubilees are too expensive. The landscaping you've done here in Florida, the company headquarters is too expensive.

You're spending too much money on clothes 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. I got you. As she should have, you know, to keep up appearances. Sure.

But yeah, that was it for her. She started a small company called Cinderella Cosmetics that folded after a year and sort of faded into obscurity, sadly. So then Earl Tupper sold out the next year, I think. 16 million? Yeah. He sells out for $16 million. Nice cash. To Rex Alldrug Company, which was eventually absorbed by Kraft, who apparently now owns Tupperware.

Oh, they do? I think. Maybe it's the parent company. Probably. And yeah, $16 million in 1958. 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. Sure. Did you find out if she, with $35,000,000, was a good salary?

Yeah, it wasn't bad. It was like $200,000 and I think $32,000 back then. Oh, well, yeah. That's good. It's not bad. I mean, especially for a female executive. Yeah, but he sold the whole thing for $16 million, gave her one year salary, moved to Costa Rica, bought an island, renounced his US citizenship, so he didn't have to pay any taxes on that.

Got divorced. Yeah. Before all that. Right. And said, Sayonara, everybody, I'm going to Costa Rica to buy an island and keep a notepad 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 1983 in Costa Rica, 76, and she died in 1992. And Tupperware has not gone out of fashion. It's been featured starting in, what year was it? I guess when they first came out at the Museum of Modern Art. Yeah. And then again in 2011, 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 50s era retro design. So there's like.

Highly sought after. The original line that Tupper 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 in good condition, they're gorgeous. He went on to the Plastics Hall of Fame. Yeah.

And now like this stuff from the 50s and 60s, you can get some decent money on eBay for that stuff. Yeah. You know, because it still works and people love that retro look. Did you know that he refused, refused to have any, any pet bowls designed? He thought it was Tupperware was too good for pets to eat 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. Yeah. Moving to Costa Rica. Would you be funny if he went down and started a cult with this slinky guy? Right.

So Tupperware stayed pretty much the same until 1990 when they designer named Morrison Cousins basically kind of redesigned for the new era. Yeah. He was already a VP, I guess at Tupperware. And he was, he decided that it was a little difficult. He had a 82 or 81 year old mother at the time, 87 year old mother at the time. When he was charged with redesigning the Tupperware line. And he, from that viewpoint, he redesigned it to make it easier for 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. Sure. He figured out a way around it by using flaps that opened and closed to release the air. Didn't require quite as much hand strength. The lids were made in contrasting colors to the bowls. So if you had low visibility, low vision, not visibility, that's totally different. If you were wearing all camouflage at the time, you'd be able to find the lid and the bowl

that go together pretty easy. Yeah. So he made them easier for old folks. 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. Yeah.

I thought this was cool. And I would love to see this on video because I'll bet it's just so bizarre and surreal to watch. They broadcast a series of live Tupperware parties on some home shopping channel in the early 90s. That was probably the first home shopping experience. Don't you imagine? I think those were around in the 80s. I think home shopping was already established. Oh, no.

When did they do this? Early 90s. Oh, I thought you said he did it like in the 60s. No, no, no. Gotcha. No. We should do one on home shopping. I'll bet that has an interesting weird history.

You think? I'll look into it. I'll let you know. Okay. 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. No, okay. Did we talk about Tupperware drag parties? We did not. We should. Yeah, 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 Longgate and sells like a million dollars worth of Tupperware in the process. He gets paid to perform. Like you got to pay 40 bucks just to a person just to have, I guess he still does house parties, but he literally does tours and does off-Broadway shows and stuff now. Right, but the whole thing is, is I mean,

it's a real Tupperware party where like you can buy Tupperware and like he's demonstrating the Tupperware and he's kind of giving his own take on what it's useful for, but he's not the only drag show in the country selling Tupperware. Of course not. Apparently a drag queen named Aunt Barbara up in Long Island was, at least in 2012, the number one salesperson in North America for Tupperware. It all makes sense when you think about it.

So 250 grand worth of Tupperware in one year. Like the kitsch of the drag show, the kitsch of Tupperware parties, it all sort of goes hand in hand. Yes, it does. And I went to the website of Dixie Longgate and he has a pretty interesting bio. I have three kids. Wynonna, Dwayne and Absorbene Jr. It's all made up, I think.

I think maybe. Although you never know. But yeah, now he has solo stand-up shows and a recent theatrical show called Never Wear a Tubetop while riding a mechanical bull and 16 other things I learned while I was drinking last Thursday. And apparently that is selling out venues. That's basically. That's selling out venues.

We're not, but that is. Don't be bitter. We will one day. If we did it in drag, we'd probably, well, no, that's not true either. One day, Chuck, how does a weird way to end this? Yeah, I think it was perfect. 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 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. A theater? You just said coming to a theater near you.

Yeah. That's like, wow. Did you ever think you would grow up to say that like in public? Sure. Oh, okay. Well, if you want to know more about Tupperware, you can type that one word in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

Let me call this the stri sand effect. You ever heard of this? No. Hello, Josh, Chuck and Jerry really enjoyed the podcast on internet censorship, although I was disturbed that SOP 303 exists. Sure. 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 2003.

And I remember what was happening actually. A picture of Barbara Streisand's home in Malibu appeared in a publicly available collection of over 12,000 photos of California coastline. The collection was documenting coastal erosion and not related to news paparazzi or tabloids or anything like that. But Streisand's lawyers filed a $50 million lawsuit against the photographer asking the picture 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 were by her attorneys. During the following month, after the whole thing became a news story, more than 400,000 people visited the website. They even coined the term the Streisand effect where an attempt to... They really got out of hand for her. Yeah, it did. I remember this blew up in her face.

An attempt at censoring or removing something from the internet results and said 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 he should know as I am. Nearly. And that is from Brenton Krause in mid Hudson Valley, New York, USA.

So, Emily, get on it so you're equally as addicted. And thank you, Brenton, for being fully addicted. To the brim. I guess. If you want to get in touch with us and talk to us about Tupperware or whatever, you can tweet to us, right? At SYSKpodcast. Yeah, Josh is manning that station.

You can go on to our awesome Facebook page, courtesy of Chuckers. Oh, man, that station. Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email. We both get those. Yeah. They come direct to us. They sure do.

To stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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