The Sketches of Earl S. Tupper’s Pre-Tupperware Inventions

Inventor Earl S. Tupper’s mind was always on. Before his Tupperware food storage containers brought him fame and fortune, his early inventions were flops. Here are five of his product concepts that never took off.

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All photos courtesy of Earl S. Tupper Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Tupper conceived a no-drip ice cream cone in 1936. In the sketch, he notes that melting cream would run down the side of the cone into a gutter. The cream would then run back into the cone through drain holes in the gutter.


Tupper sketched out various comb ideas in 1937. The bottom sketch shows an idea for a comb shaped like a dagger that could, Tupper notes, be a great addition to a bathing suit.


A corset sketched in 1935 included “cross muscles” that would make the piece fit more comfortably across the wearer’s abdomen.


With his fish-propelled boat, drawn in the spring of 1926, Tupper imagined that a large fish would be harnessed to the underside of the boat. A “wing” would prevent the fish from diving.


A water motorcycle with an outboard motor would provide “thrills on leans and curves, or afford absolute sea worthiness under worst sea conditions,” Tupper wrote on this sketch from an unknown date.

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