Hold onto your cake carriers, Tupperware is back in New Zealand!
The sunburst lids, the slightly off retro colour scheme, the infamous burp… our childhoods are littered with memories of those gorgeously garish Tupperware containers with your mum’s name written in vivid on the bottom.
They were a nostalgic kitchen staple that disappeared from New Zealand pantries in 2022 – but, from today, Tupperware has a second life in New Zealand, much like that manky old container that you finally found the lid for (how the hell did it get under the dishwasher!?).
Such was the nation’s grief when it was announced Tupperware was pulling out of Aotearoa, TradeMe reported Tupperware searches jumped 712 per cent in a day with close to 700 listings live.
While the iconic Tupperware parties might be a thing of the past (we checked, they’re definitely not coming back, at least not in their former capacity) the nostalgia factor is still high, says Daniel Grundmann, the head of sales for their new distribution company H.A.G..
“Tupperware is a brand with an incredibly strong history in New Zealand, so we always felt there was an opportunity to bring it back,” he says. “Tupperware left the New Zealand market in 2022, at a time when the traditional party-plan model was being heavily disrupted by the pandemic and changing consumer behaviour. The fundamentals haven’t changed; the quality, durability, clever design and iconic products are still there. But the way people access the brand has evolved.”
The initial success of the brand relied heavily on women gathering in each other’s living rooms, building trust, community and a network, well before the scammy MLMs of today kind of ruined that vibe for everyone.
In fact, Tupperware was very nearly a massive failure – Earl Tupper invented the airtight seal in the 40s, but his products sat ignored on department store shelves. At the time, people didn’t trust plastic, thinking it was cheap and smelly, and no one could figure out how the lids worked.
Enter a divorced single mum from Detroit, Brownie Wise (what a NAME) who pioneered the Tupperware parties – and in 1951 she was hired by Earl as the vice president of marketing. The rest is pastel printed history, with Brownie making her mark as one of the first women to hold such a senior position in business in the US, in an era where women were still very much expected to, ironically, stay at home in the kitchen, using the very products she was tasked to sell.
“The original parties were about people coming together, discovering products and sharing ideas, and that sense of community is still very much part of the brand,” says Daniel. “The format may evolve, but that spirit doesn’t have to disappear.”
THIS jug – for Raro and nothing else
It’s easy to chat about Tupperware as a kitschy relic, but for hundreds of thousands of women, it was the first money they ever earned themselves.
Why do we hold such an affinity for Tupperware, even after all these years?
I mean, it’s just plastic containers, isn’t it – but for so many of us, Tupperware is attached to core childhood memories – that jug you made Raro in, the late-70s orange range with that sunburst lid that was always in the middle of the table, the iconic jelly mould that your nan would make the weirdest stuff in (remember that era where putting savoury foods in gelatine was all the rage?! Who the hell wants jellied salmon?!).
The thing about Tupperware is that it was built to last – so, therefore, do the memories. Glass containers and ceramics chipped and cracked, appliances died, but the cockroach of kitchens, the plastic Tupperware, lived on through house moves, dodgy flats and many trips around friend groups.
Says Daniel, “For generations of New Zealanders, Tupperware meant school lunches, family meals, baking, entertaining and storing food, and because the products were designed to last, many people still have pieces that have been handed down through their families.”
But also, they were vehicles for what Kiwis pride ourselves on – bringing a plate, helping out and being there for each other.
You put leftovers in it and sent someone home fed, you filled it with a slice and took it to a woman who’d just had a baby, or a funeral, or a hard week. The container was the delivery mechanism for a whole system of care that ran, almost entirely, through women in Aotearoa – so of course we’re sentimental about it.
Remember this cake carrier?
But for this new iteration of Tupperware, Daniel says that nostalgia only gets you so far. “We’re not just selling a memory, we’re bringing back products that solve problems in the kitchen.”
What’s in the new Tupperware range?
What hasn’t changed is our love of a well-organised kitchen, if anything, our urge to decant flour and rice into their own stackable little containers is stronger than ever (speaking on behalf of my fellow millennial type A gals).
The new range covers stackable containers, multi-compartment lunch solutions, drink bottles and bowls (free of BPA, PFAS, PFOA and PTFE, which is not a sentence anyone was writing about kitchenware in 1978) and also includes a heritage line, which means replicas of the designs you remember – the sunburst lid is back, but, thankfully, they’ve updated the colour palette because no one needs a repeat of that 70s orange.
But instead of going to someone’s house to buy your collection, it’s now available online. Happy nostalgia, everyone.
About the Author:
