Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America Paperback - 2001

Excerpt

[Earl] Tupper's choice of [Brownie] Wise to organize the new distribution scheme proved fundamental to the success of Tupperware. Dynamic and capable, she convinced Tupper that the key to the success of the product lay in her imaginative and tenacious approach to party plan sales and her understanding of women's needs as housewives, consumers, and part-time workers. The success of her own company, Patio Parties, which as the name suggests appealed to leisurely, suburbun notions of modern living, certainly substantiated her claims. Wise and her mother, Rose Humphrey, organized hostess parties to sell goods as diverse as the “ketchup pump,” “the ashtray with a brain,” and “Atomite: the cleaner with ATOMIC-like action.” As an ideal gift and novelty with contemporary design appeal, Tupperware perfectly suited Wise's clever buying policy. Like the hostess party gatherings themselves, the products that she chose appealed to a new-found modernity. Items such as the hand-size “Sunny” featherweight hair dryer (available in “colors as pretty as your cosmetic box: capri, coral, bermuda blue, sahara sand”) invoked a provocative allure to a home shampoo; easily mountable on the wall “for those last-minute dashes, ‘Sunny’ will dry your hair as you polish your nails and then dry your nails, too!” Wise's immense business acumen and intuitive understanding of feminine popular culture, gift-giving, and attainable glamour would carry the hostess party, and Tupperware, to new dimensions.

Media reviews

“Alison Clarke tells [Tupperware’s story] with wit and erudition.”—Newsweek

“This detailed and entertaining book explores how the plastic storage containers known as Tupperware rose to prominence in 1950s America. . . . Tupperware was more than just a clever use of plastic and an equally clever marketing tool, it was a symbol of its time and a perfect product for a consumerist age.”—American History

“[Tupperware] explores that domestic icon of suburbia and its role in feminist history.”—Washington Post

“Clarke’s cultural analysis contributes to our growing appreciation of women’s agency in the 1950s USA, as well as in the larger culture of consumption.”—Women’s Review of Books