April 7, 2026 – Andy is in OurLittleCorner today

The Tupperware Party – Getting America Hooked on Plastic

Ann and I lately have been obsessing about the growing amount of plastic in our lives, particularly with regard to food packaging and storage and cooking utensils. So when I heard about Beth Gardiner’s new book, PLASTIC INC.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet , I had to get it. The reviews claimed that she exposes the (sometimes) nefarious economic and social forces that have made plastic one the most ubiquitous (and problematic) materials on earth.

The epigraph for her opening chapter caught my attention right off the bat:

1951 — Businessman Earl Tupper hires a marketer to plan in-home sales parties
for his Tupperware containers.
Three Million tons of plastic produced.

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s I recall my mom talking about Tupperware parties, but I never fully understood what they were all about —other than that they were parties where women could buy plastic bowls. I was curious to see what Gardiner would have to say about how Tupperware parties were part of the “nefarious” economic forces she exposes in her book. However, other than in that opening epigraph, the words “Earl Tupper,” “Tupperware,” or “in-home sales parties” never again appear in the pages of her book. So I did a little poking around the Internet and discovered that Tupperware parties not only played an important role in introducing plastic into our everyday lives, they provided an economic niche for women in a post-WWII male-dominated economy.

It all started in the late 1930s s when Earl Tupper, an employee of the DuPont chemical company, discovered that polyethylene slag, a waste product from oil refining, could be used to create lightweight, nonbreakable containers. In 1946, after developing airtight lids for the containers, he put his “Tupperware” food storage bowls on the market via hardware and department stores. A post on the National Museum of American History web site notes that Tupperware products languished on the store shelves : Americans preferred glass containers and didn’t trust plastics “which were known for being smelly and greasy.”

Everything changed in 1951 when Tupper recruited Brownie Wise to join his company to be a vice president. Wise, a divorced mom, got Tupper’s attention when he found out she was selling Tupperware products from her home using the “party plan marketing system” (which she learned as a salesperson for Stanley Home Products). In 1949 she had sold $150,000 worth of Tupperware, which is equivalent to $1,708,322 in today’s money — more than any of the stores carrying his products had earned. Soon after coming on board, Wise convinced Tupper to remove his products from stores and to use the party plan exclusively.

This business model proved to be wildly successful for the Tupperware business. By 1954 the Tupperware party network had nearly 9,000 independent consultants and revenues for the company had jumped from $5 million in 1951 to $25 million.

Tupperware parties were more than just a marketing strategy benefitting the Tupperware company. Amanda Mull writes in The Atlantic that these parties benefited women across America “who had gotten a taste of the working life during World War II but had been displaced from their wartime jobs by men returning from military service. Many of them began selling the food containers to their friends and neighbors in the living-room showcases that became Tupperware parties.”

Although Tupperware’s phenomenal growth was largely due to Brownie Wise’s shrewd marketing savvy (which was particularly impressive given the male-dominated business world she had to deal with), the party came to an end for her rather ingloriously. In 1957 she published her autobiography and the press was extolling her for Tupperware’s economic success. Her celebrity status didn’t sit well with Tupper and he forced her out of the company in 1958. Wise filed a lawsuit against the company for $1.6 million for breach of contract, eventually settling for $30,000. She owned no stock in the company and even her house was owned by the company. She never recovered financially and died in 1992 in relative obscurity.

However, the party was not over for Earl Tupper. This bit from Wikipedia says it all:

Tupper removed all mentions of Wise from company history and buried remaining copies of her autobiography in a pit near Tupperware’s headquarters. Later that year [1958], Tupper sold the company to Rexall for $16 million, divorced his wife, and moved to Costa Rica.

I began this blog wondering if in her book PLASTIC INC. Beth Gardiner considered Tupperware to be part of the “nefarious” economic forces contributing to the glut of plastic on our planet. The success of Tupperware clearly was a precursor to the upcoming groundswell of the use of plastic in American households, but I would hesitate to call this a nefarious economic force. The nefarious label seems much more apt for how Brownie Wise was asked to leave the party. I’m sure she would agree.

---

Epilogue

Since the Tupperware era a lot of plastic has gone under the bridge, so to speak. Just how much plastic is reflected in the epigraphs at the begnnig of each of Beth Gardiner’s chapters. Her first epigraph (which I included above) indicates “Three Million tons of plastic produced” in 1951. By her last chapter’s epigraph we see a whopping “473 million metric tons of plastic produced” in 2020.

Gardiner carefully examines the causes and implications of this huge influx of plastic, issues that I did not address adequately in today’s OurLittleCorner (due to having been sidetracked by the Tupperware saga). I got a copy of Gardiner’s book after reading a review by Emine Saner in the Guardian. If you are as frustrated as I am with our plastic-obsessed world and wondering what to do about it I recommend taking a look at that review.