Is Tupperware headed for Bed Bath’s great beyond?

Plus: Deadly bugs, mixing drugs and more. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a deeply people-centric business of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Tupperware]( is dying. - [Mosquitoes]( are getting deadlier. - [Mixing drugs]( can be deadly. - [The dollar]( won’t die tomorrow. Tupperware Tea Leaves A few years ago, a woman I barely knew in college reached out to me over Facebook Messenger to wish me a happy belated birthday. To call her friend-adjacent would be generous. Still, even though I went to to school in the friendly Midwest, I grew up in taciturn New England, and I am always worried about seeming like a cold, heartless Northeasterner. So I decided to reply. Two months after we exchanged niceties, I received this pitch from her: Kinda random! Yeah, girl. That would be one way to describe your asking me to join your pyramid scheme. Needless to say, I did not respond. But whenever I read about [MLM]( [horror stories](, I think back to this woman who asked me to help her and her fiancé get out of whatever shady agreement they signed with these even-shadier “successful business owners.” The origins of such [recruitment tactics]( can undoubtedly be traced to one middle-aged divorced mother from Detroit named [Brownie Wise](, who began to enlist women to sell Tupperware in the late 1940s. Her national sales force soon blossomed into a commission-based colossus. “Regional managers oversaw territories, hiring the ‘dealers’ — frontline saleswomen — tasked with recruiting the ‘hostesses’ who would open up their homes and give the dealer access to [their networks of female friends and family members,](” Stephen Mihm writes. For the rest of the 20th century, [Tupperware parties]( were a well-oiled profit machine, fueled by [suburban housewives]( hurling sealed bowls of grape juice across the living room. Tupperware hats, circa 1955. Photographer: Graphic House/Archive Photos But because the brand was so ubiquitous, it started to have what’s known as the Q-Tip problem (there’s a reason nobody calls them cotton swabs). Tupperware became synonymous with [any food storage container](, regardless of manufacturer. When the company made the decision to [partner]( with brick-and-mortar retailers recently, “the brand became increasingly hard to distinguish from other purveyors of plastic,” Stephen writes. Now, the 77-year-old business is facing a funding shortfall that no amount of plastic parlor games can fix: In a cruel twist of fate, one of the aforementioned retailers that Tupperware had hoped would save its brand was [Bed Bath & Beyond](, whose fall has been equal parts “bizarre, chaotic and tragic,” according to Leticia Miranda. The big-box housing-goods store, once a behemoth, [officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday](. Matt Levine calls it “[one of the most astonishing corporate finance transactions](” he has ever seen. Bed Bath is now rumored to be resting peacefully in a graveyard alongside Toys “R” Us, Blockbuster and RadioShack. Whether Tupperware will join their postmortem party is up for debate. But as Leticia notes: “Retail is a deeply people-centric business. When you lose people, you’re done.” If the people that Tupperware is losing are “[dutiful housewives](,” as the Daily Mail purports … well, I for one say good riddance to that. If only the other MLMs would get that message, too. A Bug’s Life Sucks They say that the first step is admitting you have a problem. So I suppose it’s good news that “people for the most part finally [accept the basic science of human-caused climate change,](” Mark Gongloff writes. But there’s just one catch: We’re not really willing to do very much about it. “Foot-dragging on climate is everywhere you look,” he explains, pointing to the recent G-7 meeting as proof: But while countries bicker about coal power, the consequences of climate change are already showing up on our doorstep. Think about tropical diseases. Mosquitos aren’t just annoying bugs that like to suck your arm off as you eat a hot dog on a warm summer night. They’re also deadly pests — and “as greenhouse-gas emissions make our planet hotter and wetter, [disease-spreading mosquitoes are thriving](,” Lara Williams writes. From South America to France, the world’s most deadly animal is wreaking havoc on humanity: Cases of dengue, which sometimes goes by the nickname of “break-bone fever” (I wouldn’t suggest Googling that), reached 5.2 million in 2019 — up from about 500,000 in 2000. And Lara says the deadly mosquitoes — Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus  — are just the beginning: “A whole host of disease-spreading vectors,” from ticks to freshwater snails, are getting a new lease on life as temperatures rise. Source: Twitter In other deadly animal news, Faye Flam notes that [the Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch]( now plays host to a bevy of marine critters that could end up destroying other forms of life. “Some will die in their new habitat, but others will outcompete the locals and turn a diverse ecosystem into a monoculture. Or they may carry a parasite that wipes out local species — a fate that killed [most of the oysters]( in the Chesapeake Bay,” she writes. Everywhere we look, climate change is forcing animals to evolve, oftentimes at the expense of human life. We may have admitted that we have a climate change problem, but we’re nowhere close to doing enough to solve it. Telltale Charts If you’re unfamiliar with xylazine, a drug that veterinarians traditionally use to sedate animals, let this be your wake-up call. [A growing number of fentanyl producers are mixing the two drugs together]( to make a lethal concoction called “tranq,” which Lisa Jarvis says “can cause skin to slough off, forming deep wounds that can become so badly infected they require amputation.” The new wave of polysubstance abuse is a deeply troubling wrinkle in America’s already tragic opioid epidemic. Niall Ferguson asks the question that few economists and financial journalists have bothered to ask: “If something doesn’t change for half a century — the dollar is the dominant currency and some foreign leaders resent that — why do economists and financial journalists keep [predicting the demise of the dollar]( every six or seven years?” He has a point! The dollar is king. And this is a tortoise race — maybe by, say, 2043, China might be a contender for bronze, at best. Further Reading [The Second Amendment]( doesn’t entitle you to shoot other people. — Bloomberg’s editorial board [Federal workers]( don’t really need to go back to the office. — Justin Fox Europe’s most valuable company has some [giant competition](. — Chris Bryant China’s plan to save [real-estate developers]( is shoddy. — Shuli Ren War over Taiwan would look a lot [like this](. — James Stavridis Apple is mysteriously absent from [the chatbot race](. — Tim Culpan and Parmy Olson The Biden administration is right to [play nice]( with Brazil. — Eduardo Porter ICYMI Tucker Carlson [is out](. Don Lemon [is out](. Jeff Shell [is out](. Bud Light execs [step out](. Check your [cumin](! Kickers [Space sex]( won’t be easy. A stunning [solar storm](. (h/t Ellen Kominers) Why do dead celebs have [Twitter checkmarks](? A high school teacher’s [side hustle]( might save AI. Meet [the DINKs]( (Dual Income, No Kids). Would you trade Taylor Swift tix for [a year of free pizza](? Notes:  Please send uncontaminated cumin and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](