Pink bowls & yellow bottles: Tupperware's journey from desire to necessity

Tupperware entered the scene in India in the late nineties and quickly infiltrated the urban kitchen

Back in the day, kitchens in urban homes looked quite similar. There would be steel utensils for daily use and ceramic ones — either all white or with floral patterns on the border — for when guests came visiting. Then came the eighties and the kitchen started changing. What was until then a purely functional, no-frills space had a new entrant: Melamine.

Melamine dinnerware positioned itself as a replacement for those simple steel plates and bowls. It added colour and patterns to everyday dining, and since it was “unbreakable”, you didn’t have to worry about it getting chipped like ceramic when handled day in and day out. Steel plates and bowls were now pushed to one side of the kitchen rack or stacked away in a cupboard.

So strong was melamine’s “unbreakable” pitch that it was tempting to test it. Many curious children would give in to that temptation and deliberately throw a plate on the floor. It would invariably break, and the mischievous child would get a sound dressing-down, or have the ear pulled, or end up with a thrashing, depending on the model of punishment the parent subscribed to.

Those of us old enough to remember that period would probably also remember Lucille Ball, the lovable American comedy star of sitcoms like I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, which were broadcast on Doordarshan. Today, these shows would make one cringe, both for their over-the-top acting and their problematic portrayal of gender roles and power equations, but back in the day, they were all the rage. Among other things, they captured — and questioned — the trends of the time.

In one episode of The Lucy Show, titled “Lucy Gets Trapped”, the protagonist calls in sick to work so that she can go to a sale at a department store. And what does she encounter there? A dinnerware section with a sign that reads, “Try our unbreakable dishes.” She promptly proceeds to “try” them out — by picking up a plate and hitting it on the counter corner. Of course it breaks, sending an alarmed store manager rushing to Lucy to arrest further damage.

Melamine dinnerware was not the only kitchen revolution to make it to popular culture. There was also Tupperware, which entered the scene in India in the late nineties and quickly infiltrated the urban kitchen.

Tupperware wasn’t just a brand of colourful and innovative containers and bottles. It was a phenomenon that created an ecosystem through which housewives could make some money of their own rather than depend on their husbands for a monthly allowance, like Lucy did on her on-screen (and real-life) husband, Desi Arnaz, in I Love Lucy. This was a time much before the gender-neutral “homemaker” replaced the term “housewife”.

With an army of women as its “direct sellers”, many of whom organised Tupperware parties in their circles to promote and sell the product, Tupperware went from being an object of desire to an object of necessity. The women didn’t have to really venture out of their community circles since this was a home business. So, while they got a bit of financial freedom, often for the first time in their lives, it all remained well within the acceptable gender boundaries. The debate on whether Tupperware challenged gender stereotypes or strengthened them, or did both, continues.

Shows such as F is for Family and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel have captured this contradiction in some episodes. In the animated series F is for Family, the character of a soft-spoken Sue Murphy, a wife and a mother, has an emotional breakdown as the purposelessness of her life hits her while she is sitting at her dining table with her “hobby” — packing Plast-a-Ware (a take on Tupperware) in cartons with thank-you notes to people for attending her Plast-a-Ware Party.

In The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, the protagonist, Midge Maisel, turns to selling Tupperware in desperation when her standup comedy career hits rock bottom. To her Tupperware party guests, she introduces the beautiful pastel-coloured containers as, “Plastic, the modern miracle”. Among other things, she presents the retro Wonderlier bowl.

The scene was the result of a collaboration between Tupperware and Amazon, on which the show aired. Five-piece sets of Wonderlier bowls were later put on sale on Tupperware’s website for a limited period, with the company inviting fans to “Stock your fridge like Midge”. This was perhaps Tupperware’s last hurrah. The company has filed for bankruptcy, its blue, green, pink, yellow containers today a memory of the time that once was.