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