Burp!
Suddenly Tupperware is everywhere. Not in my kitchen, mind you - but in my media diet. First, Saveur ran an item in it's Saveur Fare section. Then, the NYT ran a brief in the Currents section of Home Design.
Tonight, PBS will premiere a new documentary about this all-American leftover maintance solution firm. The special landed Tupperware firmly on the cover of this week's NYT TV Week pull-out section and reviews in scads of newspapers around the country, including the company's hometown paper, The Orlando Sentinel:
A documentary that rips the lid off a company's story, Tupperware! performs as well as its title product. The ingredients that spill out of this Central Florida saga about the 1950s are fresh, juicy and crisply presented.
That's the verdict of several Tupperware veterans.
"It was sensational," says former Tupperware executive Gary McDonald, who saw the film at the Sarasota Film Festival. "It provides information which many people have wondered about and not known about."
Mary Siriani, who sold Tupperware products for 26 years, is no less effusive about a film she has seen twice. "It was spectacular," the Sarasota woman says. "I couldn't believe the research they did, to get all of this information, to travel all over the country."
Tupperware! will premiere at 9 p.m. Monday on PBS' American Experience on WMFE-Channel 24. The hour program gives the viewer quite a lot to chew on, from women's limited role in the '50s to the perils of being a workaholic to the wonders of plastic. There's even a goofy montage of lids being put on Tupperware bowls.
Above all, the film explains the unlikely partnership that transformed Tupperware into a phenomenon. Secretive, reclusive Earl Silas Tupper of Massachusetts invented the admired product.
Brownie Wise brought it to a wide audience through inspiring leadership, vivacious style and the Kissimmee headquarters she turned into a pilgrimage site for her female sales force. Her motto: "If we build the people, they'll build the business."
With an overtly perky name like Brownie Wise, it now seems that Wise was predestined to start a cult-like, all-female sales force - It was that, or start a low-cal bakery.
So, will I take this new PR/marketing blitz to heart and buy a set of Tupperware? Or, better yet, become a Tupperware Lady? Considering my rather "complete" collection of plastic Chinese takeout containers , I think my answer to the first is a resounding "no." But, as for a career change - you never know. The Sunday NYT Money & Business section provided quite a pretty picture of life in the burp lane:
At the beginning, I still meant to hold my managerial retail job and to do this sort of part time. I started out with five parties booked, but after just the first one I made my monthly target. That really drove the possibilities home. Before the month's end, I gave notice at my "real job," and all of a sudden I'm a stay-at-home mom, with a flexible job and a great income.
When I tell people I'm a Tupperware lady, or consultant, I have to brace myself. I went to private high school, so when I went to my 15-year reunion, the room was full of Ph.D.'s and people with all sorts of highflying careers. A guy I dated in high school asked me what I was up to. I told him that I was with Tupperware. First came the blank stare, then the uncomfortable cough, then the loss of eye contact.
I let him go through the motions until he got to the inevitable: "You're a real live Tupperware Lady?"
"Yes," I said. "And I know you have no idea how terrific that is. You can't imagine. It was midlife crisis and it was the best professional move in my life."
It shut him up right away.
And, apparently, they throw in a free car for good measure...Hmm...