Tupperware: How the plastic containers conquered the world

We lift the lid on the iconic brand of containers that have transformed leftovers, fridges and cupboards forever

Hosting a Tupperware party, as illustrated here in the 1950s, brought women at least part ways out of the kitchen.

With single-use plastic recently ripped from the produce in our supermarkets, and a revolting raft of drinking bottles and other malleable rubbish choking our oceans — it’s easy to forget just how exciting innovative plastics were in the mid’ 20th century. During the pandemic, the share price of one old favourite, polyethylene, has tripled. 

Tupperware was developed by the delightfully named Earl Silas Tupper (1907–1983) a Massachusetts native. It took him eight years to bring his bell-shaped, pliable, lidded storage boxes effectively to market in 1946 through the ingenious mechanism of sale-through-presentation at-home parties.