In 1936, Hulseman founded his own business-originally called Paper Container Manufacturing-selling a similar paper cone. In 1911, the Chicago City Council outlawed the use of “common drinking cups”-or the “Cup of Death,” as a Tribune headline put it-in “any building or place open to the public, or in any lodginghouse or boardinghouse, factory, office, store, or private school.” (The ordinance is still on the books.) Before the early 1900s, it had been common for people to drink water out of shared cups, but the twentieth century brought a growing awareness that this was a great way to ingest germs. Paper cups were in demand because of concerns about hygiene.
What are the secrets behind the success of this company’s seemingly simple but omnipresent products?īefore Leo Hulseman started the company on Chicago’s South Side during the Great Depression, the South Dakota native was a salesman for Vortex Manufacturing Company in Chicago, which used a machine patented in 1920 by local inventor David F. While Star Wars fans are eager to learn more about Han Solo’s origin story, Solo Cup’s Chicago origins have long been a subject of fascination for design nerds. And a big model of the Millennium Falcon fashioned out of the company’s red cups was on display May 10 at Hollywood’s red-carpet premiere of the movie. Solo Cup has hopped onboard-Solo plates and cups are for sale in packages emblazoned with pictures of the young Han Solo and his hirsute helmsman, Chewbacca.
Solo? Get it? Of course, the movie would be about Han Solo, the wisecracking rogue who pilots that rickety but surprisingly durable spacecraft, the Millennium Falcon. Red Cup? Well, the most famous red cups known to mankind are probably those ubiquitous plastic receptacles manufactured by Solo Cup Company. When word leaked out a few years ago about a new Star Wars movie code-named “Red Cup,” it wasn’t hard to guess which character would be its hero.