April 24, 2025 • 45 mins
Burrrrp! The sound is familiar to any fan of Tupperware -- it's that little whoosh of air when you push down the lid and remove excess air. But what exactly is Tupperware? How did it become such an ubiquitous part of U.S. kitchens? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive deep into the surprisingly dramatic rise of Tupperware... and how the unsung hero Brownie Wise took it from a novelty product to worldwide fame.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Uh, let's hear it. Let's get
a let's you know what, let's get a tupperware purp
for our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Gross, no picture a tupperware purp. That is not right.
It's like, do you do what?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You're an old brown I've been bullets, yeah, breath, breath, tupperware.
It's like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, there's that.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
We're gonna talk about the elephant the room, and it
has to be Oblivion.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Oblivion.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Nobody knows this biggest news and gaming.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
We're recording on Tuesday, April twenty second, twenty twenty five,
about eleven am local time. And uh during this time,
during this recording, uh, we have asked our pal Max
to pull some double duty and keep an eye on
the news regarding Bethesda's latest re release of Oblivion, which
(01:31):
is a game we enjoy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Also, jumping real quick, the serious thing that I actually
wanted to put up here on the top. Happy four
years boys?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Hey?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
For twenty was four years of me on the show.
Oh nice, Yeah, congratulations to you, Max, and happy for
twenty and happy Jesus' rebirthday.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, step aside, Pope Francis, there's bigger news.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think he did step aside in a terminal kind
of sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, we've we've been going back and forth about you know,
the news is crazy these days, it's chaotic. People are
in uncertain times, and so we decided off air that
we were going to look into some stuff that is
not necessarily breaking news, but a story that needs to
(02:24):
be told. With the help of our research associate Ren Fellow,
ridiculous historians, Noel Max and I are going to do
some justice to the world of tupperware. We're going to
tell you a story of an unsung hero you may
not have heard of up to this point. Her name,
(02:45):
real name, Brownie Wise. I think it's a cool name.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It's a very cool name. It seems like a concept
like being Brownie Wise. You know, a good brownie when
you see it. Ben, you know, I'll tell you what
I think whenever I hear the word tupperware, aside from
you know, keeping my leftovers fresh is the idea of
(03:09):
a Tupperware party? Yeah, I think we're gonna explore that
a little bit today. And number two, that scene in
Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico is selling tupperware and he
enlists I think Napoleon and Pedro to help out, and
he does a thing where he like runs over a
piece of tupperware. No, I know who it is. It's
Napoleon's brother runs over a piece of tupperware in a
van and it breaks, and then he just runs away
(03:32):
or he drives away. That was the thing that I
always remember hearing, like it's indestructible, this this tupperware.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I love that we're bringing up film because I think
of I want to say it was Edward Scissorhands. Isn't
there like a tupperware party scene in there?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It seems like there would be. It was very much
about Suburbia. It was I think, well they did. The
main character played by Dan we is a what is
it Avon Avon lady. That's what it came. Ball mark
of Suburbia was the Avon calling and the tupperware part,
the direct marketing. Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
As Ren points out, if you have a plastic container
that you use to store leftovers in your fridge or
you know, in your bread basket or whatever. You probably
casually referred to it as tupperware. In the United States.
It's one of those things that became a universal name
(04:31):
like xerox or to Google, or band aid or Kleenex
or you know, Frisbee, even a coke you know sometimes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the old soda pop. And right now we're coming to
you from the past. We want to rip off the
band aid first and let you know that Tupperware as
(04:52):
an organization, filed for bankruptcy in the fall of twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Say it ain't so.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I wish we could say it ain't so. Maybe it overturn.
But in the Halcyon salad days, this company, NOL Tupperware
was known for that business model we're describing and comparing
to Avon. It relied upon people that you would describe
as housewives, right, and they're often, unfortunately a population that
(05:24):
is treated as though they were on the margins. And
the idea was, look, we're not going to put this
stuff immediately in stores. We're going to build a community
around these products.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, and they're selling an image with their stackable measuring
cups and plastic pictures and party ware and you know,
things for storing your leftovers. And it's sort of like
pitched as this sort of innovative, sort of futuristic solution.
This is back when, like if I'm not mistaken, plastic
was still seen as kind of like a technological marvel.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
A real up and comer right in comparison to it.
It's also ran material bake light for anybody who remembers
bake like. So, look, we're all accustomed to story leftovers, hopefully.
I know some people have some strong opinions about leftovers,
(06:19):
but you know me, nol, I'm like a reduce, reuse,
recycled kind of guy. So when I order takeout food
or something, I do prioritize places that will give me
reusable containers, so you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, And I'll work through them and they'll eventually crack
and stuff and I'll throw them away, but I definitely
get use out of good quality to go containers. If
you're looking for some real good ones in the Atlanta area,
there's a local chain called Fresh to Order, and their
plastic containers are second to none. I've got stacks and
stacks of them as re inputs. It tumbling out of
(06:55):
my kitchen cabinet.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, look at me. Just we're an audio podcast. But
as you know, Noel MX, I reuse glass pasta jars
as cups for coffee.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You're a beljar man. Thank you. I'm going to take
that as a compliment. We have a look.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
We all know the plastic container game here in the
modern US, and we do often refer to those containers
to your earlier point as tupperware, even if they're not
technically tupperware. The reason this phrase and concept became so
ubiquitous is not necessarily due to the inventor of tupperware.
(07:39):
This is why we're on a mission in today's episode.
We come to you to defend the reputation of a writer,
a divorced mother, a brilliant mind, Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Brownie Wise, he said it earlier, the protagonist of our
story versus, if we must, the big of our story,
the guy tupper himself, the guy.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Who invented, in a burst of humility, tupperware.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Tupperware. But first, Ben, let's talk a little bit about plastic.
Not just any plastic, okay, polyethylene.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It's science, yeah, yeah, and it's science that is driven
by necessity, right, the mother of invention. Travel back with us,
fellow ridiculous historians. It's nineteen thirty seven. The Great Depression,
which is still a terrible name, is very much in play.
(08:34):
People are having just the roughest time. I remember, you know,
history is always closer than it appears in the rear
view mirror.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Noel.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Recently, after death in the family, I was going through
some things at an estate and I found a cabinet.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It's so weird.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I found a cabinet that had in the back of
it a collection of small rolled up string because they
didn't want to throw away the string. In the nineteen thirties,
they thought they might need it again.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It was a frugal time, and you know, with everyone
struggling to make ends meet, including companies you know, who
were having our times selling their goods because people just
couldn't afford to buy it. It's a sort of chain
reaction that triggered a lot of companies going out of business.
Of course, so while today maybe we couldn't picture a
world without microplastics, you know, in plastics, the children and
(09:31):
everything in all the things. Yeah, at the time, like
we were saying, it was quite a new innovation in
the day of Tupper, and companies were really eager to
start to spin this new miracle material into gold. So
Tupper was hired at a plastics factory, Ben, I believe
you found the actual company name.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh yes, yeah, it's our our old friends at Dupond.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh we've heard of them. They were kind of first
to market in the old plastics game.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
They do a lot of material science, and they're also
finding uses for various fossil fuel products of petros eight
of course, right, yeah, all a pnopoly of products. We
want to give a big shout out to Professor Marcia
Bryant's writing for The Conversation back in twenty eighteen from
(10:20):
Slag to Swag, the story of Earl Tupper's fantastic plastic. So,
like you're saying, this guy, he's having a hard time,
as is most of the American population, and he gets
hired by a DuPont affiliated plastic company, plastics company to
(10:42):
test prototypes. And look, he is not in a silver
spoon situation. Earl Tupper at this point is not the
villain of our story. Instead, he's a man trying to
answer a question that he knows is common for so
many people struggling with a challenging economy. He says, Look,
(11:04):
it's hard enough to buy groceries. Less than half of
America can afford a refrigerator. People are growing their own
food in their backyard out of desperation. Surely there's a
way that we could preserve food so it doesn't go
to waste. And he came up with this idea. He said,
(11:24):
what if we made a container out of this plastic
that these DuPont guys are pigeon?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, for sure. And I was just going to say,
if it seems like you missed an opportunity for a
good slogan here.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Stretch your supper with Tupper, Ah stretcher supper with Tupper
stretched their supper stood out to me as well in
Wren's research. That's that's a really good turn of phrase. Look,
the issue was the material science wasn't quite there yet.
The existing substances that Tupper was working with were not
(11:57):
super ductile.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, like uncle, because probably less than a subpar plastic containers.
I mean, granted he probably shouldn't run over regular typeware
with a van either, but it would crack when under
pressure in even before it reached market. In the molding process.
It was a flaw of the way this plastic that
they were using was being manufactured.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So this guy is looking for his golden goose, right,
the holy grail, the next step in material science, and
he starts taking little pieces of different types of plastic
home and experimenting on his own time, you know, off
the books. He eventually lands upon something called polyethylene. Nobody
(12:43):
had thought to test polyethylene for its ductility because it
was considered a byproduct. It was considered kind of a
trash plastic people, kind of like.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Bacon back in the day of Edward Burnet's. Yeah, I mean,
like the idea that you could a by product like
bacon of a slaughtering process, a manufacturing process to create
pork chops or pork products, and what was seen as
something that to be discarded or as like trash meat
in that situation was ultimately spun into a marketing miracle
(13:16):
by Edward Burnet's early stuff that I want you to
know episodes about the Father of Marketing there you can
check out. But this is even more like a functional thing,
this byproduct that was referred to by the folks that
you know, we're manufacturing this stuff as slag. Tupper saw
something in it, literally, the idea that it could potentially
be more durable and be molded because of some properties
(13:39):
that he found in it when kind of digging into
the samples that he brought back.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, and this is to be fair, after he's taken
multiple samples of things we will call slag in the
plastics industry and tested them at home. So travel with
us to Tupper's kitchen. He's at home in his kitchen,
and like you were saying, no, he says, wow, this polyethylene.
(14:05):
It is stinky. It is slag, but you can melt it,
and his kitchen probably smelled terrible. If we're being honest
at this point. You can melt it and you can
put it into a mold and it's not going to break.
This is where he starts returning to the you know,
to his day job and saying, guys, let's call it
(14:28):
poly t material of the future.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The issue now is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Okay, So we got two issues. First, the issue is
the smell. Second, the if you haven't thought about the smell. Second,
the issue is the lid. Right now, we can make
a bowl. How do we make a lid?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, yeah, this is confusing to me. Maybe you can
help shed some light on this, the idea that there
was a catch that, like, you know, people were used
to just closing a bell jar, a Mason jar with
a screw top, but there was like a an extra step.
I guess before you were storing your stuff. I guess
you wanted to get the air out of it, or
get as much air out as possible, so you had
(15:08):
to burp the seal, and it was tough. Smithsonian Magazine
points out for people who were accustomed to glass jars
and ceramic containers to kind of figure this out. And
maybe I'm just spoiled by a life of luxury surrounded
by Tupperware, But I guess I don't understand the I know,
a Tupperware burp is referred to as the sound that
(15:29):
it makes when that seal is released, But what does
this mean? The idea that like you had to burp it, it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Really means you had to teach the population how to
use the product. And I love that we're pointing out
Smithsonian because Kat Eschner did some fantastic work in her
article The Story of Brownie Wise, the ingenious marketer behind
the Tupperware Party Light spoiler. It makes sense. We've talked
about it before. With other big rollouts of new products,
(15:58):
you kind of have to teach the people or normalize
the consumer base towards certain behaviors. So, like you were saying, Noel,
if you are used to canning, right, you got your
mason jar and you got your screwtop lid, you already
know about soda at this point, and how to open
(16:19):
cans right the can opener as an invention already the
people who are making tupperware are trying to figure out
how to teach folks this extra step. You've got to
leverage up one corner of the container and then push
down a little bit to get that excess air out.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
That's what it is for sure, yep. And then you
know and it's not like required, but he was pitching
this as a tried and true method for getting the
most out of your preservation right of your food. So
a good example too is if you used to maybe
using plastic wrap. I learned this back when I first
worked in a restaurant in my in my younger days.
But you put plastic wrap on the top of the thing,
(17:01):
and you're supposed to push it down so that the
air gets forced out of the sides, and it almost
creates like a vacuum seal where it kind of, you know,
bows inward a little bit. It's just a simpler method
of doing say what like a vacuum sealer food saver
situation does, where it literally sucks all the air out.
But by lifting that lid and pushing down a little
bit and forcing that air out, you're gonna do exactly
(17:23):
what the best possible sales pitch for this thing was,
preserve your food for longer.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And this is where we introduce our protagonist Max a
little bit of protagonist music, if we may, for the
one the only Brownie Wise, while not the inventor of
(17:55):
what we call Tupperware, Brownie Wise is I would argue
the reason Tupperware is still considered a thing today.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
For sure. She had a vision.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, she has a vision. She knows how to speak
with the people, right and at this time, tupper they're
calling the new invention the wonder Bull. And you've probably
seen a picture of this or you've probably you might
have one in your cabinet. Now let's learn a little
bit about Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
She is from Georgia, that's right, rural Georgia born in
nineteen thirteen. A bit of a mystery in terms of
her backstory. We do know that she dropped out of
school at the age of fourteen to work with her
mother as an organizer for union, the hat makers Union,
And from a very very early age she had a
(18:48):
lot of drive. She was a dreamer. She had that
vision very early on. She wanted to be a writer
and an illustrator. And in nineteen thirty six she won
a chance to paint a mural at the Texas Centennial,
which is call back to another Rent episode, a World's
Fair exhibition.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, great stuff. And while she's in Texas for this fair,
she meets a guy named Robert and she kind of
digs them, and later they get married. Robert is in
charge of an exhibit for the Ford Motor Company at
the World's Fair or at the Texas Centennial. When they
(19:27):
get together, picture every amazing rom com meet you you've
ever seen. They eventually have one child, Jerry, and then
they move to Detroit. While they're in Detroit, Brownie Wise,
who was always a very talented writer and illustrator, we
know that she would contribute to a column called Experience
(19:51):
published in Detroit News. It's a reader's forum wherein people
write under different pseudonyms like jin wis so uh no,
Canci get it uh and hippity hop.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Way ahead of his time. They invented hip hop back
in Detroit in the thirties. So whys had her own
pen name, and it was Hibiscus. That just sounds very
southern and genteel Hibiscus and Hibiscus, as I guess in
the role in the character, that the sort of lore
(20:26):
she was stilled the world building, uh huh. She had
a devoted husband by the name of Yankee. Despite his
unwavering love, She missed her family mansion back home in Mississippi.
Oh how long? How long for the indeed, with a
mint julib on the porch, the conveniences, as she put it,
(20:46):
of a Southern bell. Hibiscus and Wise were very much
too completely different. Becau's not the real story. This is
so funny. It's sad.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It's so sad because Hibiscus, although Brownie Wise is writing
this character, Hibiscus is not real and Brownie is leading
a very different life.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Her husband Robert.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
From this centennial that we talked about earlier. He is
nothing like the strapping Yankee. He is addicted to booze.
He is also abusive. Eventually the couple divorces. It's nineteen
forty two, so divorce is still very unfair to women
(21:32):
in this country for sure. And now she's a single mother.
She's still got Jerry. Like you said, she has dropped out.
She doesn't have too much formal education to speak of.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It's the height.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Of World War two, so things are already not great again,
and she's working multiple it's like a gig economy, right,
she has coperate jobs.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And then she finds her way to sort of a
proto version of the business model that we're are really
you know, getting to the idea of being a door
to door salesman. You know, you hear a lot more
of our salesperson rather I go. You hear a lot
more about that business model from this air aisle. You
think about death of a salesman, for example the Tennessee
Williams play, and just the idea of like being a
(22:17):
vacuum cleaner salesman, where you like bring the little bag
of dirt and pour it on the ground and then
like show how you can vacuum it up or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, sell it encyclopedias or knives, or there's a great
documentary now parody selling clobes. One of the uh, I
don't know if I told you guys, one of the
weirdest comedy sketches I ever wrote was you know how
you love to take a notion or a dumb initial
(22:45):
idea and just see how four you can go with it.
I'm gonna pitch it to you guys now, door to
door door salesman. Yeah, it's like buying luggage at the airport.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I love it. Thank you for the support of that one.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah, if I can jump in here real quick, We've
already referenced one timber in film, so I think we
should reference another one, which is a big fish. Which
in Big Fish Ewan McGregor's character, who's like the younger
father thing. Watch the movie. He sells door to door
like it's a hand that holds things because the fish
(23:19):
is always is kind of a movie that's like a
little bit off and one of my favorite things about
because obviously I came out after Edwards Scissorhands. They were
very intentional because the thing was the hand would hold
a bunch of different things. They made sure for it
to never have scissors in the hand.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I guess perfect a solution to a problem that doesn't
exist for most people. That's what made for TV products. Sorry,
I love it to just give everybody a sense of
how far down the rabbit hole we walked on that sketch, which,
as stute listeners can find on YouTube. I imagine the
(23:53):
door to door door salesman sells doors themed doors like
Jim Morrison. Oh that's a galaxy brain to me, dude.
So Brownie Wise, like you were saying, is already getting
her feet on the street.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
She's selling these Stanley Home products knock knock, ring the doorbell,
walking into people's homes and saying, check out this cleaning product. Here,
these cool brushes, maybe a vacuum cleaner. She looks around, right,
she's the top seller at this point for Stanley Home products,
and she says, hang on, what's this tupperware thing? I
(24:35):
go on a tick.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
What's this? Why isn't it selling? Well?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The wonder bowl is a great idea.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, and she kind of had to ask herself why,
Like what this doesn't make sense? This is such a
great idea, such a great concept must have something to
do with the communication with the public that these things
should potentially be absolutely blowing up with, which led her
to this concept of burping the container before putting into
(25:02):
the fridge. So Wise kind of figured that she could
come up with a better way of selling this stuff
to the public, specifically to housewives. Housewives we talked about
that she understood their lives. She was able to kind
of speak that language because that was her absolute background,
especially in being a single mother, having to stretch the
(25:24):
food that she puts on the table coming by this stuff. Honestly,
she figured that she could sell this product using the
home party method that she had learned at Stanley. M M.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, And a home party method means that our protagonist,
our hero of this story, Brownie Wise, is not just
going door to door solo. She is introducing people to
a community. So now we can have folks get together
and talk about how much they love Stanley home products.
She thinks, maybe I could build a community around Tupperware. Again,
(25:59):
it's very difficult to be a single mother, right, She's
a single bomb. Quite motivated. She moves with her son
from Detroit over to Florida and she found her own
company called Tupperware Patio parties, I like saying Patio. So
(26:21):
Whise started hosting tupperware parties at her own home, and
while she was at these parties, she would tell people like,
she would solve the problem Earl tupper couldn't figure out.
She would normalize the idea of burping the tupperware, like
showing you how to do it, and she also would
(26:43):
make it just like a cool hang It's a cool
house party. That's what she nailed.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Very community focused. I mean, I would argue that there's
a lot of, you know, outside of the marketing genius
of it all, this was a time where folks were
feeling kind of isolated, you know, and then to give
them a reason to kind of connect with other like
minded or you know, people from the same background in
their community. I think that's really neat that she was
(27:10):
kind of fostering that with these tupperwear parties, and she
also kind of had a bit of flair while she
would demonstrate, you know, the technique of burping the tupperwaar,
normalizing and making it part of it obviously household naming
the concept of a tupperware burp. While I didn't really
fully understand before this exactly what it was referring to
I certainly knew the term, and you can thank Wise
(27:32):
for that. She also speaking of flair a little bit
of theatricality. She would toss around to the folks attending
the party a bowl, one of those tupperware bowls full
of grapefruit je showing that it wouldn't leak. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Again, the wonder bowl is sort of the flagship product
at this point, and she would take grape juice, demo, grape.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Juice, Yes, grape fruits. Yeah, yeah, even better because like
that's the scary stuff that I know will stay right.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
The class ad banter, the pattern we used to call
it back in the UK. And she is able to
take this wonder bowl, show people how to successfully close
the lid and burp the tupperware, and yeah, she's thrown around,
Look this will leak, which is amazing. So it doesn't
(28:20):
take long, It's less than a year. It's just a
few months. And Brownie Wise has expanded tupperware patio parties.
Now she has not quite franchising, but she has tupperware dealers,
she has a crew. She's building out the organization such
(28:41):
that there are home party managers, most of whom are women,
and they are running the game as well. So we
have to understand the context. Right, this is post World
War two at this point, and the US needed needed resources, right,
(29:02):
needed employees. So women entered the workforce at an unprecedented
level for the country. But now that the war is
over and these men are returning, they're taking these women's jobs,
and there's this huge, incredibly unfair cultural push to put
(29:24):
women away from public workforce, right and put them back
into the kitchen, back into the housewives situation. There's nothing
wrong with whatever path people choose to take on their own,
as long as you're not hurting people. But a lot
of women felt that they were unfairly getting pushed out
(29:46):
of the workforce.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
This was not a glass ceiling.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
This was a matter of US companies aggressively firing women,
pushing them out for nothing other than misogyny.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, like it's one of those
things where it's like, oh, you're we're good enough to
take your jobs while you're away at war, but when
you're back, it's like you just toss this out, like
I'm sorry, I don't mean to speak for women, but
certainly the sentiment and the idea of you know, really
carrying the weight while the men were off at war
and then being treated like second class citizens. Yeah, and
(30:22):
no appreciation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And as a result, there are a lot of people
in this demographic who want to continue working in some capacity, right,
And so these folks hear about Brownie wise, they hear
about tupperware patio parties, and they want to get involved
in the business because now it is a thing they
(30:46):
can do that is gainful employment and is less unfair.
I don't want to say completely unfair, but it's less
unfair than the rest of the American job market.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I guess that's looked at as like safe for something,
you know, the powers to be here. It's sort of like,
oh yeah, let them have that little topperware parties, you know,
which is incredibly dismissive and gross, you know, in retrospect,
but it was it was a place that they could go.
And not to mention, the TopWare company was also very
(31:16):
diverse and it's hiring practices. You would see black women
coming from urban and rural areas participating in these Tupperware
parties and again stretching out these networks to other areas
where they live.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And this is incredibly successful. The secret to Wise's success,
by the way, is not entirely based on the Stanley
Home Products model. It's the community that she builds. She
has a great She has a great quotation that we
(31:56):
found in Smithsonian and a couple of other places. Wise,
one said if you build the people, they'll build the business,
which I thought was super insightful. And of course this
is where our turn occurs.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Noal, because it is insightful. It's a little on the
corp pretty side. He could look at it as the
corp pretty kind of slightly decermonizing way of looking at things.
But I don't know that that's how she intended it.
But I guess maybe be hindsight, it.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Might be our internalized BIS.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Right, that's right, That's what I'm getting dot. So this
was the turn though, however, right, this is a point
where the world changed and Tupperware somewhat got left behind.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So here's our turn. We introduced the guy, the inventor,
Earl Tupper, right, the dude smuggling plastic pieces and slag
into his home. It's the early nineteen fifties. Earl Tupper,
inventor of the Wonder Bowl, is following the Tupperware boom
in Florida. What's going on down there? What's up with
this patio company? H And he does his homework. He
(33:06):
is incredibly impressed. He is astonished at how great Brownie
Wise is at at popularizing Tupperware, which, to be clear,
it was, uh it was a chestnut he himself could
not crack, or a walnut he could not crack.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You're both difficult to crack anyway. Well, it's tough to
crack a tough nut, all right. Well he can't get
that tree nut.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And so he reaches out to Brownie Wise and he says, look,
you're awesome. You are so good at this. You have
pretty much saved this product. Please be vice president of
the entire company, my company. So Earl Tupper knows a
good idea when he sees it, and after or based
on his conversations with Brownie Wise, he switches the sales
(33:54):
strategy of Tupperware Company entirely to this home party, build
the community field, a dreams type plan. This direct marketing,
and this is a huge boom to Tupperware. American culture
now is in that golden post World War two era,
(34:15):
right the time of retro futurism atop atomic energy, making
the world clean despite all the unclean things Adam Baumbs did.
And now we see a booming middle class. People are
buying cars, more people of refrigerators, two point five kids,
(34:36):
nuclear family at home. Entertaining becomes a fixture of social life.
This is also just side note for our friends at Savor.
This is where you see a lot of just terrible cookbooks.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Oh god, yeah, they'remember lots of lots of mayonnaise based stuff,
lots of gelat elat based stuff, meat gelatines in fact,
is that I think the biggest gross out. They're all
meant to be these like center pieces kind of and
they're just so hideous. It's like aspect and.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I appreciated as sculpture but maybe not food.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, maybe not. It's definitely was. It was definitely a
vibe for sure. And the cookbooks were everywhere and they
are a lot of fun if you get a hold
of them. We actually did an episode quite a while
back on Gelatine on like Jello cookbooks, and we talk
about all this stuff. So check going out if you
can find it. And to your point, bent about you know,
neo futurism and all of that good stuff. Tupperware is
(35:35):
perfect for that because it's sort of pitched as this
like miracle material, and now there's ways of like making
it fun colors, you know, and different kinds of stackability
and accessories and things that link together. It's such a
valueable material by its very nature that you can pretty
much mold it into whatever shape you want. And that
starts to kind of catch up with the change in
(35:57):
demographic where now people are doing a little bit better.
The Great Depression is a little further in the rearview mirror.
You have a new kind of middle class coming up,
and people are like having parties, not tupperware parties, like
hosting events, you know, gatherings or whatever. So they put
out like I think it was like a section serving
platter that you can kind of put different dips or whatever,
(36:20):
crew tita perhaps gelatine based items in there. But all
of this very much been to your point, matches up
with the kind of images you'd see in some of
these cookbooks in terms of like the spread and highlighting
the use of the microwave for example. All of this
like the atomic age kind of of you know, futuristic living.
(36:40):
They really thought they were, you know, on the cutting edge.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Hey, what do you think about us doing commercials from
the past in future?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
You must there's so many good ones, and all of
that would be public domain audio stuff, so we could
find a ton of great clips and make it like
a audio clip show. I love it, Ben, Let's do it,
all right, let's do it, Nol.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
We also know that by nineteen fifty four, Supperware is
just running the game. They're amazing at this The sales
have reached twenty four million US dollars. And if we
could do an inflation calculator here and a dude about
(37:22):
nineteen fifty four, twenty four million dollars in twenty twenty
five money, that is slight drum roll, two hundred and
eighty four million, six hundred and eighty two thousand, eight
hundred and twenty five dollars.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
That's a lot. That is indeed a lot. When I
first looked at it, I think I added some extra
the decimal places and thought it was hundreds of billions
of dollars. But still impressive, Still impressive, Still impressive.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, like you were saying earlier, there are over twenty
thousand dealers direct marketers and the Tupperware network. And I
love this point about the diversity right, the fact that
we have black women who are given an opportunity, you
know what I mean that would maybe not ordinarily occur
(38:17):
in orthodox industry. And they're saying, look, Tupperware is not
just white, suburban you know, matchbook House. Hell, this speaks
to universal need for so many people. And you also mentioned,
of course, Brownie Wise is a female executive at a
(38:38):
time where that is quite rare. She doesn't have a
ton of mentors. So if we go to another Smithsonian
Magazine article from the writer Bob Keeling, we'll see this
argument that without a community appears Brownie Wise sought to
create one, which is really inspiring.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
It super is. And lest we forget that, mister tupper
himself was you know, introduced as our big bad you
may think to yourself, thus far, he's doing so much
great stuff for women, and Brownie Wise made or the
executive and everything. At the end of the day, though, folks,
he was pretty much just as bad as as many
(39:19):
of the men in leadership that tossed women aside in
the workplace. He was more enamored with the idea and
he saw dollar signs you know, dancing over Wise's head
and a little less concerned with the human being.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, and he became Look, they needed each other for
Tupperware to work, but Earl Tupper grew envious. He grew
jealous because Brownie Wise was getting headlines.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know what I mean. She was the face of
the company. She was a face of the.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Company, sort of like how you would see, oh, who's
that amazing act her who does the progressive commercials?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Like, oh, what she's talking about the guy from oz Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Sure that guy too. Yeah, but you know what I mean,
Like she became a par.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I'm sorry. Now, there's so many celebrities are doing stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So she is reaching celebrity, right, that's the point. She
is the as you said, public face. People are associating
Brownie Wise with Tupperware, and it's great for the business.
But Earl Tupper is being a bit of a drip
about it. He's saying, why is this person, you know,
(40:39):
popular as high school as it towns And so he
is consistently getting hostile with Brownie Wise. He starts to
micromanage the stuff she does, even though she knows what works. Obviously,
around nineteen fifty seven, Tupper is actively seeking to cut
(41:00):
Brownie Wise from his company, and that's where we reach
a disastrous moment in Tupperware history. It is a luau
gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Oh yeah. At first I'm looking at this and I'm like,
these Tupperware related injuries, I don't understand now. They were
apparently weather related injuries. Several folks sustained injuries at this
party due to some unforeseen bad weather, and this led
to some lawsuits against the Tupperware company that went on
(41:31):
for many years. Very interesting though. We were talking off
Mike about what would lead to a legitimate claim in
a situation like this, and I guess you could be
sued for liability or maybe negligence. So in nineteen fifty eight,
having gotten the excuse that he was looking for, Tupper
fired Wise from the company. And I believe she'd received
(41:54):
no stock options and was just paid one year's salary
as severance.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Which is an absolute ripoff. You know, this weather was
beyond her control. It's a private island on a lake
in Kissimee, Florida, but there are a ton of people there.
They're like twelve hundred people there. So this is, as
you were saying, an opportunistic move on Tupper's part. Look
her Brownie Wise. Her life continues post Tupperware. She starts
(42:23):
cosmetic companies using this sales model that if we're honest
she created. None of them are quite you know, like
Avon level. They're not super successful. She passes away in
Florida in Kissemi in nineteen ninety two. She is seventy
nine years old, and she was a part of buried history.
(42:45):
Put away as though she was placed in some sort
of proverbial tupperware container, a tomb a tupperware toom, a
Tupperware mausoleum. Yeah, until twenty sixteen, and that's when the
Tupperware Company donated two one hundred thousand US dollars to
name a park after her near their corporate headquarters in Orlando.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And if you go to the official website of the
Tupperware Company, you can find mention of Brownie Wise in
their official company backstory.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
And with that, we have to give a shout out
to an absolute badass. I hope I can say badass
on air. Ben Thompson or colleague from Badass of the
Week probably knows and loves this story. Big, big, thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Huge thanks to.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Our research associate Ren for bringing some justice to the
untold story of Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Whose do we think? Ooh ooh, real quick, I just
want to say I went to Tupperware dot com and
despite having declared bankruptcy in twenty twenty four, that doesn't
mean the company has gone and you there is a
link at the very top that says host a party,
so they very much are still carrying on that legacy
of Brownie Wise to this very day. Huge thanks to
(44:04):
Max Williams, superproducer extraordinaire Alex Williams who composed this bang
and Bob.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Twister Big Big
thanks of course to aj Bahamas Jacobs who does listen
to the show. Thank you, Bahamas Big. Thanks to Rachel
Big Spinach Lance. If you like our show, please check
out the Rude dudes at Ridiculous Crime, good friends of ours,
(44:31):
and they also will bring justice to buried history.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Man. If y'all want to get I'm on this Tupperware party,
you can receive a free host gift special with five
hundred dollars in party sales Tupperware Wave Stack cooker. It's
like one of those microwave cover things to keep it
from splashing. Or actually it's a cast throw and to
colinder all in one. My mistake. We'll see you next time, folks.
(44:59):
For more podcast us from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Uh, let's hear it. Let's get
a let's you know what, let's get a tupperware purp
for our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Gross, no picture a tupperware purp. That is not right.
It's like, do you do what?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You're an old brown I've been bullets, yeah, breath, breath, tupperware.
It's like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, there's that.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
We're gonna talk about the elephant the room, and it
has to be Oblivion.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Oblivion.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Nobody knows this biggest news and gaming.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
We're recording on Tuesday, April twenty second, twenty twenty five,
about eleven am local time. And uh during this time,
during this recording, uh, we have asked our pal Max
to pull some double duty and keep an eye on
the news regarding Bethesda's latest re release of Oblivion, which
(01:31):
is a game we enjoy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Also, jumping real quick, the serious thing that I actually
wanted to put up here on the top. Happy four
years boys?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Hey?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
For twenty was four years of me on the show.
Oh nice, Yeah, congratulations to you, Max, and happy for
twenty and happy Jesus' rebirthday.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, step aside, Pope Francis, there's bigger news.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think he did step aside in a terminal kind
of sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, we've we've been going back and forth about you know,
the news is crazy these days, it's chaotic. People are
in uncertain times, and so we decided off air that
we were going to look into some stuff that is
not necessarily breaking news, but a story that needs to
(02:24):
be told. With the help of our research associate Ren Fellow,
ridiculous historians, Noel Max and I are going to do
some justice to the world of tupperware. We're going to
tell you a story of an unsung hero you may
not have heard of up to this point. Her name,
(02:45):
real name, Brownie Wise. I think it's a cool name.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It's a very cool name. It seems like a concept
like being Brownie Wise. You know, a good brownie when
you see it. Ben, you know, I'll tell you what
I think whenever I hear the word tupperware, aside from
you know, keeping my leftovers fresh is the idea of
(03:09):
a Tupperware party? Yeah, I think we're gonna explore that
a little bit today. And number two, that scene in
Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico is selling tupperware and he
enlists I think Napoleon and Pedro to help out, and
he does a thing where he like runs over a
piece of tupperware. No, I know who it is. It's
Napoleon's brother runs over a piece of tupperware in a
van and it breaks, and then he just runs away
(03:32):
or he drives away. That was the thing that I
always remember hearing, like it's indestructible, this this tupperware.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I love that we're bringing up film because I think
of I want to say it was Edward Scissorhands. Isn't
there like a tupperware party scene in there?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It seems like there would be. It was very much
about Suburbia. It was I think, well they did. The
main character played by Dan we is a what is
it Avon Avon lady. That's what it came. Ball mark
of Suburbia was the Avon calling and the tupperware part,
the direct marketing. Yeah, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
As Ren points out, if you have a plastic container
that you use to store leftovers in your fridge or
you know, in your bread basket or whatever. You probably
casually referred to it as tupperware. In the United States.
It's one of those things that became a universal name
(04:31):
like xerox or to Google, or band aid or Kleenex
or you know, Frisbee, even a coke you know sometimes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the old soda pop. And right now we're coming to
you from the past. We want to rip off the
band aid first and let you know that Tupperware as
(04:52):
an organization, filed for bankruptcy in the fall of twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Say it ain't so.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
I wish we could say it ain't so. Maybe it overturn.
But in the Halcyon salad days, this company, NOL Tupperware
was known for that business model we're describing and comparing
to Avon. It relied upon people that you would describe
as housewives, right, and they're often, unfortunately a population that
(05:24):
is treated as though they were on the margins. And
the idea was, look, we're not going to put this
stuff immediately in stores. We're going to build a community
around these products.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, and they're selling an image with their stackable measuring
cups and plastic pictures and party ware and you know,
things for storing your leftovers. And it's sort of like
pitched as this sort of innovative, sort of futuristic solution.
This is back when, like if I'm not mistaken, plastic
was still seen as kind of like a technological marvel.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
A real up and comer right in comparison to it.
It's also ran material bake light for anybody who remembers
bake like. So, look, we're all accustomed to story leftovers, hopefully.
I know some people have some strong opinions about leftovers,
(06:19):
but you know me, nol, I'm like a reduce, reuse,
recycled kind of guy. So when I order takeout food
or something, I do prioritize places that will give me
reusable containers, so you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, And I'll work through them and they'll eventually crack
and stuff and I'll throw them away, but I definitely
get use out of good quality to go containers. If
you're looking for some real good ones in the Atlanta area,
there's a local chain called Fresh to Order, and their
plastic containers are second to none. I've got stacks and
stacks of them as re inputs. It tumbling out of
(06:55):
my kitchen cabinet.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, look at me. Just we're an audio podcast. But
as you know, Noel MX, I reuse glass pasta jars
as cups for coffee.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You're a beljar man. Thank you. I'm going to take
that as a compliment. We have a look.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
We all know the plastic container game here in the
modern US, and we do often refer to those containers
to your earlier point as tupperware, even if they're not
technically tupperware. The reason this phrase and concept became so
ubiquitous is not necessarily due to the inventor of tupperware.
(07:39):
This is why we're on a mission in today's episode.
We come to you to defend the reputation of a writer,
a divorced mother, a brilliant mind, Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Brownie Wise, he said it earlier, the protagonist of our
story versus, if we must, the big of our story,
the guy tupper himself, the guy.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Who invented, in a burst of humility, tupperware.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Tupperware. But first, Ben, let's talk a little bit about plastic.
Not just any plastic, okay, polyethylene.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It's science, yeah, yeah, and it's science that is driven
by necessity, right, the mother of invention. Travel back with us,
fellow ridiculous historians. It's nineteen thirty seven. The Great Depression,
which is still a terrible name, is very much in play.
(08:34):
People are having just the roughest time. I remember, you know,
history is always closer than it appears in the rear
view mirror.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Noel.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Recently, after death in the family, I was going through
some things at an estate and I found a cabinet.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It's so weird.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I found a cabinet that had in the back of
it a collection of small rolled up string because they
didn't want to throw away the string. In the nineteen thirties,
they thought they might need it again.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It was a frugal time, and you know, with everyone
struggling to make ends meet, including companies you know, who
were having our times selling their goods because people just
couldn't afford to buy it. It's a sort of chain
reaction that triggered a lot of companies going out of business.
Of course, so while today maybe we couldn't picture a
world without microplastics, you know, in plastics, the children and
(09:31):
everything in all the things. Yeah, at the time, like
we were saying, it was quite a new innovation in
the day of Tupper, and companies were really eager to
start to spin this new miracle material into gold. So
Tupper was hired at a plastics factory, Ben, I believe
you found the actual company name.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh yes, yeah, it's our our old friends at Dupond.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh we've heard of them. They were kind of first
to market in the old plastics game.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
They do a lot of material science, and they're also
finding uses for various fossil fuel products of petros eight
of course, right, yeah, all a pnopoly of products. We
want to give a big shout out to Professor Marcia
Bryant's writing for The Conversation back in twenty eighteen from
(10:20):
Slag to Swag, the story of Earl Tupper's fantastic plastic. So,
like you're saying, this guy, he's having a hard time,
as is most of the American population, and he gets
hired by a DuPont affiliated plastic company, plastics company to
(10:42):
test prototypes. And look, he is not in a silver
spoon situation. Earl Tupper at this point is not the
villain of our story. Instead, he's a man trying to
answer a question that he knows is common for so
many people struggling with a challenging economy. He says, Look,
(11:04):
it's hard enough to buy groceries. Less than half of
America can afford a refrigerator. People are growing their own
food in their backyard out of desperation. Surely there's a
way that we could preserve food so it doesn't go
to waste. And he came up with this idea. He said,
(11:24):
what if we made a container out of this plastic
that these DuPont guys are pigeon?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, for sure. And I was just going to say,
if it seems like you missed an opportunity for a
good slogan here.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Stretch your supper with Tupper, Ah stretcher supper with Tupper
stretched their supper stood out to me as well in
Wren's research. That's that's a really good turn of phrase. Look,
the issue was the material science wasn't quite there yet.
The existing substances that Tupper was working with were not
(11:57):
super ductile.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, like uncle, because probably less than a subpar plastic containers.
I mean, granted he probably shouldn't run over regular typeware
with a van either, but it would crack when under
pressure in even before it reached market. In the molding process.
It was a flaw of the way this plastic that
they were using was being manufactured.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So this guy is looking for his golden goose, right,
the holy grail, the next step in material science, and
he starts taking little pieces of different types of plastic
home and experimenting on his own time, you know, off
the books. He eventually lands upon something called polyethylene. Nobody
(12:43):
had thought to test polyethylene for its ductility because it
was considered a byproduct. It was considered kind of a
trash plastic people, kind of like.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Bacon back in the day of Edward Burnet's. Yeah, I mean,
like the idea that you could a by product like
bacon of a slaughtering process, a manufacturing process to create
pork chops or pork products, and what was seen as
something that to be discarded or as like trash meat
in that situation was ultimately spun into a marketing miracle
(13:16):
by Edward Burnet's early stuff that I want you to
know episodes about the Father of Marketing there you can
check out. But this is even more like a functional thing,
this byproduct that was referred to by the folks that
you know, we're manufacturing this stuff as slag. Tupper saw
something in it, literally, the idea that it could potentially
be more durable and be molded because of some properties
(13:39):
that he found in it when kind of digging into
the samples that he brought back.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, and this is to be fair, after he's taken
multiple samples of things we will call slag in the
plastics industry and tested them at home. So travel with
us to Tupper's kitchen. He's at home in his kitchen,
and like you were saying, no, he says, wow, this polyethylene.
(14:05):
It is stinky. It is slag, but you can melt it,
and his kitchen probably smelled terrible. If we're being honest
at this point. You can melt it and you can
put it into a mold and it's not going to break.
This is where he starts returning to the you know,
to his day job and saying, guys, let's call it
(14:28):
poly t material of the future.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The issue now is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Okay, So we got two issues. First, the issue is
the smell. Second, the if you haven't thought about the smell. Second,
the issue is the lid. Right now, we can make
a bowl. How do we make a lid?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, yeah, this is confusing to me. Maybe you can
help shed some light on this, the idea that there
was a catch that, like, you know, people were used
to just closing a bell jar, a Mason jar with
a screw top, but there was like a an extra step.
I guess before you were storing your stuff. I guess
you wanted to get the air out of it, or
get as much air out as possible, so you had
(15:08):
to burp the seal, and it was tough. Smithsonian Magazine
points out for people who were accustomed to glass jars
and ceramic containers to kind of figure this out. And
maybe I'm just spoiled by a life of luxury surrounded
by Tupperware, But I guess I don't understand the I know,
a Tupperware burp is referred to as the sound that
(15:29):
it makes when that seal is released, But what does
this mean? The idea that like you had to burp it, it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Really means you had to teach the population how to
use the product. And I love that we're pointing out
Smithsonian because Kat Eschner did some fantastic work in her
article The Story of Brownie Wise, the ingenious marketer behind
the Tupperware Party Light spoiler. It makes sense. We've talked
about it before. With other big rollouts of new products,
(15:58):
you kind of have to teach the people or normalize
the consumer base towards certain behaviors. So, like you were saying, Noel,
if you are used to canning, right, you got your
mason jar and you got your screwtop lid, you already
know about soda at this point, and how to open
(16:19):
cans right the can opener as an invention already the
people who are making tupperware are trying to figure out
how to teach folks this extra step. You've got to
leverage up one corner of the container and then push
down a little bit to get that excess air out.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
That's what it is for sure, yep. And then you
know and it's not like required, but he was pitching
this as a tried and true method for getting the
most out of your preservation right of your food. So
a good example too is if you used to maybe
using plastic wrap. I learned this back when I first
worked in a restaurant in my in my younger days.
But you put plastic wrap on the top of the thing,
(17:01):
and you're supposed to push it down so that the
air gets forced out of the sides, and it almost
creates like a vacuum seal where it kind of, you know,
bows inward a little bit. It's just a simpler method
of doing say what like a vacuum sealer food saver
situation does, where it literally sucks all the air out.
But by lifting that lid and pushing down a little
bit and forcing that air out, you're gonna do exactly
(17:23):
what the best possible sales pitch for this thing was,
preserve your food for longer.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And this is where we introduce our protagonist Max a
little bit of protagonist music, if we may, for the
one the only Brownie Wise, while not the inventor of
(17:55):
what we call Tupperware, Brownie Wise is I would argue
the reason Tupperware is still considered a thing today.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
For sure. She had a vision.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, she has a vision. She knows how to speak
with the people, right and at this time, tupper they're
calling the new invention the wonder Bull. And you've probably
seen a picture of this or you've probably you might
have one in your cabinet. Now let's learn a little
bit about Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
She is from Georgia, that's right, rural Georgia born in
nineteen thirteen. A bit of a mystery in terms of
her backstory. We do know that she dropped out of
school at the age of fourteen to work with her
mother as an organizer for union, the hat makers Union,
And from a very very early age she had a
(18:48):
lot of drive. She was a dreamer. She had that
vision very early on. She wanted to be a writer
and an illustrator. And in nineteen thirty six she won
a chance to paint a mural at the Texas Centennial,
which is call back to another Rent episode, a World's
Fair exhibition.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, great stuff. And while she's in Texas for this fair,
she meets a guy named Robert and she kind of
digs them, and later they get married. Robert is in
charge of an exhibit for the Ford Motor Company at
the World's Fair or at the Texas Centennial. When they
(19:27):
get together, picture every amazing rom com meet you you've
ever seen. They eventually have one child, Jerry, and then
they move to Detroit. While they're in Detroit, Brownie Wise,
who was always a very talented writer and illustrator, we
know that she would contribute to a column called Experience
(19:51):
published in Detroit News. It's a reader's forum wherein people
write under different pseudonyms like jin wis so uh no,
Canci get it uh and hippity hop.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Way ahead of his time. They invented hip hop back
in Detroit in the thirties. So whys had her own
pen name, and it was Hibiscus. That just sounds very
southern and genteel Hibiscus and Hibiscus, as I guess in
the role in the character, that the sort of lore
(20:26):
she was stilled the world building, uh huh. She had
a devoted husband by the name of Yankee. Despite his
unwavering love, She missed her family mansion back home in Mississippi.
Oh how long? How long for the indeed, with a
mint julib on the porch, the conveniences, as she put it,
(20:46):
of a Southern bell. Hibiscus and Wise were very much
too completely different. Becau's not the real story. This is
so funny. It's sad.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It's so sad because Hibiscus, although Brownie Wise is writing
this character, Hibiscus is not real and Brownie is leading
a very different life.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Her husband Robert.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
From this centennial that we talked about earlier. He is
nothing like the strapping Yankee. He is addicted to booze.
He is also abusive. Eventually the couple divorces. It's nineteen
forty two, so divorce is still very unfair to women
(21:32):
in this country for sure. And now she's a single mother.
She's still got Jerry. Like you said, she has dropped out.
She doesn't have too much formal education to speak of.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It's the height.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Of World War two, so things are already not great again,
and she's working multiple it's like a gig economy, right,
she has coperate jobs.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And then she finds her way to sort of a
proto version of the business model that we're are really
you know, getting to the idea of being a door
to door salesman. You know, you hear a lot more
of our salesperson rather I go. You hear a lot
more about that business model from this air aisle. You
think about death of a salesman, for example the Tennessee
Williams play, and just the idea of like being a
(22:17):
vacuum cleaner salesman, where you like bring the little bag
of dirt and pour it on the ground and then
like show how you can vacuum it up or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, sell it encyclopedias or knives, or there's a great
documentary now parody selling clobes. One of the uh, I
don't know if I told you guys, one of the
weirdest comedy sketches I ever wrote was you know how
you love to take a notion or a dumb initial
(22:45):
idea and just see how four you can go with it.
I'm gonna pitch it to you guys now, door to
door door salesman. Yeah, it's like buying luggage at the airport.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I love it. Thank you for the support of that one.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah, if I can jump in here real quick, We've
already referenced one timber in film, so I think we
should reference another one, which is a big fish. Which
in Big Fish Ewan McGregor's character, who's like the younger
father thing. Watch the movie. He sells door to door
like it's a hand that holds things because the fish
(23:19):
is always is kind of a movie that's like a
little bit off and one of my favorite things about
because obviously I came out after Edwards Scissorhands. They were
very intentional because the thing was the hand would hold
a bunch of different things. They made sure for it
to never have scissors in the hand.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I guess perfect a solution to a problem that doesn't
exist for most people. That's what made for TV products. Sorry,
I love it to just give everybody a sense of
how far down the rabbit hole we walked on that sketch, which,
as stute listeners can find on YouTube. I imagine the
(23:53):
door to door door salesman sells doors themed doors like
Jim Morrison. Oh that's a galaxy brain to me, dude.
So Brownie Wise, like you were saying, is already getting
her feet on the street.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
She's selling these Stanley Home products knock knock, ring the doorbell,
walking into people's homes and saying, check out this cleaning product. Here,
these cool brushes, maybe a vacuum cleaner. She looks around, right,
she's the top seller at this point for Stanley Home products,
and she says, hang on, what's this tupperware thing? I
(24:35):
go on a tick.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
What's this? Why isn't it selling? Well?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
The wonder bowl is a great idea.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, and she kind of had to ask herself why,
Like what this doesn't make sense? This is such a
great idea, such a great concept must have something to
do with the communication with the public that these things
should potentially be absolutely blowing up with, which led her
to this concept of burping the container before putting into
(25:02):
the fridge. So Wise kind of figured that she could
come up with a better way of selling this stuff
to the public, specifically to housewives. Housewives we talked about
that she understood their lives. She was able to kind
of speak that language because that was her absolute background,
especially in being a single mother, having to stretch the
(25:24):
food that she puts on the table coming by this stuff. Honestly,
she figured that she could sell this product using the
home party method that she had learned at Stanley. M M.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, And a home party method means that our protagonist,
our hero of this story, Brownie Wise, is not just
going door to door solo. She is introducing people to
a community. So now we can have folks get together
and talk about how much they love Stanley home products.
She thinks, maybe I could build a community around Tupperware. Again,
(25:59):
it's very difficult to be a single mother, right, She's
a single bomb. Quite motivated. She moves with her son
from Detroit over to Florida and she found her own
company called Tupperware Patio parties, I like saying Patio. So
(26:21):
Whise started hosting tupperware parties at her own home, and
while she was at these parties, she would tell people like,
she would solve the problem Earl tupper couldn't figure out.
She would normalize the idea of burping the tupperware, like
showing you how to do it, and she also would
(26:43):
make it just like a cool hang It's a cool
house party. That's what she nailed.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Very community focused. I mean, I would argue that there's
a lot of, you know, outside of the marketing genius
of it all, this was a time where folks were
feeling kind of isolated, you know, and then to give
them a reason to kind of connect with other like
minded or you know, people from the same background in
their community. I think that's really neat that she was
(27:10):
kind of fostering that with these tupperwear parties, and she
also kind of had a bit of flair while she
would demonstrate, you know, the technique of burping the tupperwaar,
normalizing and making it part of it obviously household naming
the concept of a tupperware burp. While I didn't really
fully understand before this exactly what it was referring to
I certainly knew the term, and you can thank Wise
(27:32):
for that. She also speaking of flair a little bit
of theatricality. She would toss around to the folks attending
the party a bowl, one of those tupperware bowls full
of grapefruit je showing that it wouldn't leak. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Again, the wonder bowl is sort of the flagship product
at this point, and she would take grape juice, demo, grape.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Juice, Yes, grape fruits. Yeah, yeah, even better because like
that's the scary stuff that I know will stay right.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
The class ad banter, the pattern we used to call
it back in the UK. And she is able to
take this wonder bowl, show people how to successfully close
the lid and burp the tupperware, and yeah, she's thrown around,
Look this will leak, which is amazing. So it doesn't
(28:20):
take long, It's less than a year. It's just a
few months. And Brownie Wise has expanded tupperware patio parties.
Now she has not quite franchising, but she has tupperware dealers,
she has a crew. She's building out the organization such
(28:41):
that there are home party managers, most of whom are women,
and they are running the game as well. So we
have to understand the context. Right, this is post World
War two at this point, and the US needed needed resources, right,
(29:02):
needed employees. So women entered the workforce at an unprecedented
level for the country. But now that the war is
over and these men are returning, they're taking these women's jobs,
and there's this huge, incredibly unfair cultural push to put
(29:24):
women away from public workforce, right and put them back
into the kitchen, back into the housewives situation. There's nothing
wrong with whatever path people choose to take on their own,
as long as you're not hurting people. But a lot
of women felt that they were unfairly getting pushed out
(29:46):
of the workforce.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
This was not a glass ceiling.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
This was a matter of US companies aggressively firing women,
pushing them out for nothing other than misogyny.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, like it's one of those
things where it's like, oh, you're we're good enough to
take your jobs while you're away at war, but when
you're back, it's like you just toss this out, like
I'm sorry, I don't mean to speak for women, but
certainly the sentiment and the idea of you know, really
carrying the weight while the men were off at war
and then being treated like second class citizens. Yeah, and
(30:22):
no appreciation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And as a result, there are a lot of people
in this demographic who want to continue working in some capacity, right,
And so these folks hear about Brownie wise, they hear
about tupperware patio parties, and they want to get involved
in the business because now it is a thing they
(30:46):
can do that is gainful employment and is less unfair.
I don't want to say completely unfair, but it's less
unfair than the rest of the American job market.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I guess that's looked at as like safe for something,
you know, the powers to be here. It's sort of like,
oh yeah, let them have that little topperware parties, you know,
which is incredibly dismissive and gross, you know, in retrospect,
but it was it was a place that they could go.
And not to mention, the TopWare company was also very
(31:16):
diverse and it's hiring practices. You would see black women
coming from urban and rural areas participating in these Tupperware
parties and again stretching out these networks to other areas
where they live.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And this is incredibly successful. The secret to Wise's success,
by the way, is not entirely based on the Stanley
Home Products model. It's the community that she builds. She
has a great She has a great quotation that we
(31:56):
found in Smithsonian and a couple of other places. Wise,
one said if you build the people, they'll build the business,
which I thought was super insightful. And of course this
is where our turn occurs.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Noal, because it is insightful. It's a little on the
corp pretty side. He could look at it as the
corp pretty kind of slightly decermonizing way of looking at things.
But I don't know that that's how she intended it.
But I guess maybe be hindsight, it.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Might be our internalized BIS.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Right, that's right, That's what I'm getting dot. So this
was the turn though, however, right, this is a point
where the world changed and Tupperware somewhat got left behind.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So here's our turn. We introduced the guy, the inventor,
Earl Tupper, right, the dude smuggling plastic pieces and slag
into his home. It's the early nineteen fifties. Earl Tupper,
inventor of the Wonder Bowl, is following the Tupperware boom
in Florida. What's going on down there? What's up with
this patio company? H And he does his homework. He
(33:06):
is incredibly impressed. He is astonished at how great Brownie
Wise is at at popularizing Tupperware, which, to be clear,
it was, uh it was a chestnut he himself could
not crack, or a walnut he could not crack.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You're both difficult to crack anyway. Well, it's tough to
crack a tough nut, all right. Well he can't get
that tree nut.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And so he reaches out to Brownie Wise and he says, look,
you're awesome. You are so good at this. You have
pretty much saved this product. Please be vice president of
the entire company, my company. So Earl Tupper knows a
good idea when he sees it, and after or based
on his conversations with Brownie Wise, he switches the sales
(33:54):
strategy of Tupperware Company entirely to this home party, build
the community field, a dreams type plan. This direct marketing,
and this is a huge boom to Tupperware. American culture
now is in that golden post World War two era,
(34:15):
right the time of retro futurism atop atomic energy, making
the world clean despite all the unclean things Adam Baumbs did.
And now we see a booming middle class. People are
buying cars, more people of refrigerators, two point five kids,
(34:36):
nuclear family at home. Entertaining becomes a fixture of social life.
This is also just side note for our friends at Savor.
This is where you see a lot of just terrible cookbooks.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Oh god, yeah, they'remember lots of lots of mayonnaise based stuff,
lots of gelat elat based stuff, meat gelatines in fact,
is that I think the biggest gross out. They're all
meant to be these like center pieces kind of and
they're just so hideous. It's like aspect and.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I appreciated as sculpture but maybe not food.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, maybe not. It's definitely was. It was definitely a
vibe for sure. And the cookbooks were everywhere and they
are a lot of fun if you get a hold
of them. We actually did an episode quite a while
back on Gelatine on like Jello cookbooks, and we talk
about all this stuff. So check going out if you
can find it. And to your point, bent about you know,
neo futurism and all of that good stuff. Tupperware is
(35:35):
perfect for that because it's sort of pitched as this
like miracle material, and now there's ways of like making
it fun colors, you know, and different kinds of stackability
and accessories and things that link together. It's such a
valueable material by its very nature that you can pretty
much mold it into whatever shape you want. And that
starts to kind of catch up with the change in
(35:57):
demographic where now people are doing a little bit better.
The Great Depression is a little further in the rearview mirror.
You have a new kind of middle class coming up,
and people are like having parties, not tupperware parties, like
hosting events, you know, gatherings or whatever. So they put
out like I think it was like a section serving
platter that you can kind of put different dips or whatever,
(36:20):
crew tita perhaps gelatine based items in there. But all
of this very much been to your point, matches up
with the kind of images you'd see in some of
these cookbooks in terms of like the spread and highlighting
the use of the microwave for example. All of this
like the atomic age kind of of you know, futuristic living.
(36:40):
They really thought they were, you know, on the cutting edge.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Hey, what do you think about us doing commercials from
the past in future?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
You must there's so many good ones, and all of
that would be public domain audio stuff, so we could
find a ton of great clips and make it like
a audio clip show. I love it, Ben, Let's do it,
all right, let's do it, Nol.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
We also know that by nineteen fifty four, Supperware is
just running the game. They're amazing at this The sales
have reached twenty four million US dollars. And if we
could do an inflation calculator here and a dude about
(37:22):
nineteen fifty four, twenty four million dollars in twenty twenty
five money, that is slight drum roll, two hundred and
eighty four million, six hundred and eighty two thousand, eight
hundred and twenty five dollars.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
That's a lot. That is indeed a lot. When I
first looked at it, I think I added some extra
the decimal places and thought it was hundreds of billions
of dollars. But still impressive, Still impressive, Still impressive.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Yeah, like you were saying earlier, there are over twenty
thousand dealers direct marketers and the Tupperware network. And I
love this point about the diversity right, the fact that
we have black women who are given an opportunity, you
know what I mean that would maybe not ordinarily occur
(38:17):
in orthodox industry. And they're saying, look, Tupperware is not
just white, suburban you know, matchbook House. Hell, this speaks
to universal need for so many people. And you also mentioned,
of course, Brownie Wise is a female executive at a
(38:38):
time where that is quite rare. She doesn't have a
ton of mentors. So if we go to another Smithsonian
Magazine article from the writer Bob Keeling, we'll see this
argument that without a community appears Brownie Wise sought to
create one, which is really inspiring.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
It super is. And lest we forget that, mister tupper
himself was you know, introduced as our big bad you
may think to yourself, thus far, he's doing so much
great stuff for women, and Brownie Wise made or the
executive and everything. At the end of the day, though, folks,
he was pretty much just as bad as as many
(39:19):
of the men in leadership that tossed women aside in
the workplace. He was more enamored with the idea and
he saw dollar signs you know, dancing over Wise's head
and a little less concerned with the human being.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, and he became Look, they needed each other for
Tupperware to work, but Earl Tupper grew envious. He grew
jealous because Brownie Wise was getting headlines.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know what I mean. She was the face of
the company. She was a face of the.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Company, sort of like how you would see, oh, who's
that amazing act her who does the progressive commercials?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Like, oh, what she's talking about the guy from oz Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Sure that guy too. Yeah, but you know what I mean,
Like she became a par.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I'm sorry. Now, there's so many celebrities are doing stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So she is reaching celebrity, right, that's the point. She
is the as you said, public face. People are associating
Brownie Wise with Tupperware, and it's great for the business.
But Earl Tupper is being a bit of a drip
about it. He's saying, why is this person, you know,
(40:39):
popular as high school as it towns And so he
is consistently getting hostile with Brownie Wise. He starts to
micromanage the stuff she does, even though she knows what works. Obviously,
around nineteen fifty seven, Tupper is actively seeking to cut
(41:00):
Brownie Wise from his company, and that's where we reach
a disastrous moment in Tupperware history. It is a luau
gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Oh yeah. At first I'm looking at this and I'm like,
these Tupperware related injuries, I don't understand now. They were
apparently weather related injuries. Several folks sustained injuries at this
party due to some unforeseen bad weather, and this led
to some lawsuits against the Tupperware company that went on
(41:31):
for many years. Very interesting though. We were talking off
Mike about what would lead to a legitimate claim in
a situation like this, and I guess you could be
sued for liability or maybe negligence. So in nineteen fifty eight,
having gotten the excuse that he was looking for, Tupper
fired Wise from the company. And I believe she'd received
(41:54):
no stock options and was just paid one year's salary
as severance.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Which is an absolute ripoff. You know, this weather was
beyond her control. It's a private island on a lake
in Kissimee, Florida, but there are a ton of people there.
They're like twelve hundred people there. So this is, as
you were saying, an opportunistic move on Tupper's part. Look
her Brownie Wise. Her life continues post Tupperware. She starts
(42:23):
cosmetic companies using this sales model that if we're honest
she created. None of them are quite you know, like
Avon level. They're not super successful. She passes away in
Florida in Kissemi in nineteen ninety two. She is seventy
nine years old, and she was a part of buried history.
(42:45):
Put away as though she was placed in some sort
of proverbial tupperware container, a tomb a tupperware toom, a
Tupperware mausoleum. Yeah, until twenty sixteen, and that's when the
Tupperware Company donated two one hundred thousand US dollars to
name a park after her near their corporate headquarters in Orlando.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
And if you go to the official website of the
Tupperware Company, you can find mention of Brownie Wise in
their official company backstory.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
And with that, we have to give a shout out
to an absolute badass. I hope I can say badass
on air. Ben Thompson or colleague from Badass of the
Week probably knows and loves this story. Big, big, thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Huge thanks to.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Our research associate Ren for bringing some justice to the
untold story of Brownie Wise.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Whose do we think? Ooh ooh, real quick, I just
want to say I went to Tupperware dot com and
despite having declared bankruptcy in twenty twenty four, that doesn't
mean the company has gone and you there is a
link at the very top that says host a party,
so they very much are still carrying on that legacy
of Brownie Wise to this very day. Huge thanks to
(44:04):
Max Williams, superproducer extraordinaire Alex Williams who composed this bang
and Bob.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Twister Big Big
thanks of course to aj Bahamas Jacobs who does listen
to the show. Thank you, Bahamas Big. Thanks to Rachel
Big Spinach Lance. If you like our show, please check
out the Rude dudes at Ridiculous Crime, good friends of ours,
(44:31):
and they also will bring justice to buried history.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Man. If y'all want to get I'm on this Tupperware party,
you can receive a free host gift special with five
hundred dollars in party sales Tupperware Wave Stack cooker. It's
like one of those microwave cover things to keep it
from splashing. Or actually it's a cast throw and to
colinder all in one. My mistake. We'll see you next time, folks.
(44:59):
For more podcast us from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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