Tupperware parties were a hybrid of pyramid selling in that recruited salespeople themselves found new recruits. The difference was that they were selling legitimate products.

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The charming aspect was that selling and socialisation were combined. The more radical and progressive aspect to the business in the 1950s and ’60s was it allowed many stay-at-home housewives to earn money independently.

I’m sure many grannies can tell stories of living rooms filled with women poring excitedly over plastic containers featuring colourful lids with their tight, spill-proof seals.

However, over the decades, it was this direct selling-distribution method that became Tupperware’s undoing.

Today, even the concept of a housewife feels antiquated, as does the notion of loads of women sitting around in the suburbs wearing frilly aprons.

Now, plastic containers are on the shelves of every general merchandise department store and supermarket, and online.

Bizarrely, the Tupperware company only strayed from its direct-sales model a few years back – taking shelf space at US Target. Arguably it was three decades too late.

The cheaper supermarket plastic storage containers are ubiquitous, and made inexpensively offshore. In a throwback to the old days, Tupperware manufactured in the US until earlier this year, when its North Carolina plant was closed.

The writing has been on the wall for a decade, but alarm bells reached fever pitch last year when the company warned it was running out of cash.

Since then, it has entered into debt-financing deals, including an extended timeline to repay debt. In an even more ominous sign of its dire finances, the company didn’t publish any financial results in 2023.

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The only metric not pointing to corporate collapse was Tupperware’s share price when it became a meme stock – like video games retailer GameStop and cinema chain AMC. They all experienced extraordinary share price spikes on the back of social media cult-like campaigns, fuelled by anti-establishment day traders, often motivated by pump and dump plays aimed at hurting short sellers.

The kind of meme stocks that attract attention are typically troubled companies that have been disrupted by technology and whose business models are outdated or broken.