Lid pro quo

A product of post-war ingenuity, Tupperware lessened domestic drudgery and empowered thousands of women, but the party's finally over for this ubiquitous kitchen aid, discovers Rob Crossan

- Rob Crossan

WE'VE put men on the moon. We've created the Hadron Collider and we've got to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Yet we haven't figured out how to keep Tupperware boxes and their lids in proximity to each other. This urban quandary is destined to join the pantheon marked 'great unsolved mysteries'; perhaps to be filed below 'how do cats purr?' and above 'why do some newsagents think that the labelling instruction "Multipack-not to be sold separately" on tins of baked beans doesn't apply to them?'

Yet the lid is finally-very finally-on Tupperware, something customers have been struggling with since the company emerged in the 1940s, courtesy of Earl Tupper, a chemist in Massachusetts, US, who invented a sturdier form of plastic that he called Poly-T. Filing for bankruptcy in September, the company admitted its sales strategy was not 'diverse'. It's a judgement borne out by the fact that Tupperware was too late coming to the digital version of its famed 'parties', only beginning to stock its tubs and containers on Amazon in 2022.

It's a far cry from the 1950s and 1960s, when no housewife could be certain that she had truly arrived in suburbia until she received an invitation to a Tupperware party.