A lot of Tupperware could likely be found in prairie farmhouses back in the day, but I wonder how much is left.
We have a few holdouts in our own house, but the cupboards are virtually Tupperware-free these days.
I don’t think we’re alone, and it’s a problem that threatens the future of this once iconic company.
Share value fell 50 percent earlier this month following Tupperware’s warning that there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
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On top of that, the New York Stock Exchange says it could de-list the company for failing to file a required annual report.
Business news is full of stories about failing companies, and I rarely pay attention to them unless they’re related to agriculture.
But this one is different, and I think it’s largely because my mother was a Tupperware saleswoman in the early 1970s.
The plastic kitchenware played a big role in our family for a few years.
I remember a big truck regularly pulling into the farmyard to unload Mom’s latest orders.
I also remember how I could tell she had returned home from a late-night Tupperware party because of the unfamiliar smell of cigarette smoke that came into the house with her clothes and wafted up to my second floor bedroom.
My favourite Tupperware memory occurred during the annual fair in Saskatoon. We had driven up to a town just north of the city to visit my father’s cousin’s family, and while we were there we took in the fair with them.
Mom and my dad’s cousin, Tom, decided to take a spin on the Zipper, a staple on the fair circuit. If you don’t remember, it was basically made up of cages with metal grating for walls and a bench for sitting that was then hurled up into the sky.
While they were up there, Mom’s purse popped open and dozens of the little, blue sharpened pencils that women at Tupperware parties placed their orders with flew out through the grated walls of the Zipper cage and hurtled down onto the fairgrounds.
Tupperware for me will always be running out into a field under a night sky picking up pencils.
It was probably the most fun we had at the fair that year.
