Tupperware’s gone broke and I’m trying to put a lid on my nostalgia

When we lived in Glen Waverley in the 1970s, my mum Helene was a Tupperware dealer. By night, she’d head off in a suede midi skirt for buzzing Tupperware parties in suburban homes, and by day she’d rope in my brother and me to be part of the empire.

Pre-schoolers, we’d help Mum pack orders (“two Shape O Balls please, and there should be a Jifi Sifter somewhere”) then drive around suburbia in the maroon Datsun 180B to drop them off. Sammy and I could have spruiked the products on street corners if need be. We knew our Tupperware.

One fantastic day, we pulled up at Tupperware HQ and Mum’s name was up in lights as dealer of the month. Even then, to a little girl it had an air of glamour about it. Which I now recognise was probably empowerment, independence and social connection. At a time when many women were homemakers with limited career opportunities, Tupperware let them earn money, build a small business and network.

Five decades on, Helene still has plenty of the original products. Open her pantry, and you’ll find a square container loaded with a pumpkin fruit cake, rice and flour in their dedicated storers, some with fantastic old labels. The 1980s square containers with the “pop” lids.

Your parents’ family home might be the same. A living museum for iconic plastic products which have not just stood the test of time but are unlikely vehicles for taking you back in time to a place called the Good Old Days.

You see old Tupperware and think reliably hot summers. Riding dragsters and wearing scratch’n’sniff T-shirts, hoping Mull of Kintyre wasn’t No. 1 on Countdown for the millionth week. Making ashtrays out of Das modelling clay and aping “whistling” garden guru Allan Seale’s telly ads, when he’d blast roses with Mortein House and Garden to get rid of aphids, lace bug, even caterpillars.

So the news that Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy after years of falling popularity was an instant trip down nostalgia street. Yes, another one, almost a year after the death of Mark Goddard, aka Major Don West in Lost in Space, had me awash with memories of apricot chicken, Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, splayds and Hobbytex.

At that time, I was looking for nostalgia as a makeshift balm for general ennui and the reality of current global horrors. Wondering if people can derive happiness and wisdom from the past while cultivating hope for the future.

The Tupper news has had a different effect. Yes, I’m remembering which colour my cup was in the picnic set. But I’m also thinking ace, I’ll never have to hunt for that missing bloody lid again – and more esoterically, I’m wondering how good the good old days really were.

Was life really better back then or did we just think it was? Is it just perspective – did everything feel awesome because we were kids with few responsibilities?

People weren’t addicted to screens. Neighbours chatted over fences. Kids weren’t suiciding in record numbers. Petrol was cheap, almost anybody could buy a house, footy players had day jobs, dogs slept outside and you could leave school and work at the bank and live a happy small life that would never need to impress on social media.

But racial and gender inequalities were more pronounced. Women could be sacked for being pregnant and couldn’t apply for a credit card without a male co-signer. People died of diseases that can now be treated or managed. Shops were shut on weekends, HRT and superannuation weren’t things, and you spoke to Nan in England once a year because of the STD phone charges.

It’s easy to romanticise the past and fun to do it with cultural stuff like music and fashion. But there’s a lot we wouldn’t like nearly as much as Tupperware if we went back.

It’s our own youth we mourn for, our beauty, our lack of responsibility, roads not taken, people we’ve lost, not the actual past.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.