About eight years ago, Deborah Glassman-Gretano, 64, and a former Tupperware Lady, bought a butter dish from the company for her home in Florida.
Glassman-Gretano, who divides her time between Brooklyn and the Sunshine State, has a large collection of Tupperware from the 1980s when she sold the iconic food storage containers, but the butter dish has been an outlier.
“It does not snap close, so I never use it,” said Glassman-Gretano, an artist, a wife and a mother. “I’m thinking maybe that’s why Tupperware is going to close.”
Earlier this month, the Orlando company announced in a regulatory filing that there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue.”
Launched in 1946, Tupperware was the creation of chemist Earl Tupper, whose seal-tight design was inspired by paint cans. The brand was soon a household name.
In the the late 1940s, a single Detroit mom named Brownie Wise began hosting get-togethers to peddle Tupperware, inspiring other woman to do the same.
Tupperware Ladies and Tupperware Parties became an icon of midcentury suburban living and an early form of multilevel marketing.
In the decades that followed, numerous other brands entered the seal-tight container market. Tupperware enthusiasts have a deep love of the brand, but they admit its best years are in the past. (Tupperware did not offer comment for this piece.)
“[I] rarely deal in newer stock,” said passionate collector and eBay seller Karen St. Esprit, 68, of Beaver County, Pennsylvania. “I really love vintage and not the new Tupperware.”
St. Esprit’s interest — or what her daughter would call an obsession — in the colorful containers began in 1977 when she became a homemaker and started attending Tupperware Parties. She never hosted any parties due to the time commitment but enjoyed attending them.
In 1989, she was working as a real estate agent when she discovered unwanted shelves and pantries full of Tupperware in the homes she was listing and her collection started in earnest.
In 1989, she began auctioning off the containers — including a 1970s pie wedge container and a 1950s-era cupcake keeper — on eBay. Some months, she was selling hundreds of dollars in stock, purchased at yard sales and in consignment shops.
Certain items, such as the Picadilly — a pickle holder from the 1970s with a handle you pull to drain the juice — are especially easy to find buyers for.
“[It’s] by far the most popular piece out there,” St. Esprit told The Post of the Picadilly, which typically fetches about $15 on eBay.
Vintage modular “mates” are also rare and highly sought after.
St. Esprit is currently selling a trio of “new condition” container mates for $24.
Her listing does not include the era the containers are from, but St. Esprit said she typically lists the mold number and anyone in the know can use this to further identify the product’s origin, including whether it’s been made in the US.
Domestically made pieces are considered to be of higher quality. In recent years, many items have been manufactured in 12 countries across four continents.
Some have blamed Tupperware’s recent troubles on its reliance on the direct-to-consumer model: In 2022, it began offering select products in Target stores.
Glassman-Gretano is nostalgic about days gone by.
She said that when she hosted parties in her Brooklyn dining room in the 1980s, there was no pressure to purchase, but “everybody felt that they should buy something because the product was excellent.”
Her favorite item is the celery keeper she purchased in 1986.
The long rectangular two-toned green container has a removable crisper tray to keep stalks fresh.
Other beloved pieces include her blueberry-colored luncheon plates, serving utensils and a six-slot Popsicle maker that Glassman-Gretano received from her mother in 1985.
The latter allows her to make her own frozen treats with orange or grape juice and costs significantly less than going to the ice pop truck.
They’re what first got Glassman-Gretano hooked on Tupperware.
“It’s generational,” she said. “It will never die in my mind.”