The dinnerware was originally made of bright yellow melamine resin, but when Vignelli licensed for production in the United States, a range of bright colors were introduced, allowing consumers to mix and match their sets. The American version of these extremely popular dishes was introduced as Heller Compact Stacking Dinnerware, and it has come to be known as Hellerware. The initial offering included two covered bowls, two lipped plates, a square tray, and a rectangular tray, all of which stacked together. Matching and stackable cups and saucers were introduced in 1970. Mugs were added to the line in 1972, and in 1978 a pitcher was added. Vignelli wrote, "I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable. I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless."

According to  Vignelli, these dishes were "designed to be stackable in a compact way. [They] won our first Compasso d'Oro for good design in 1964." The manufacturer, however, went out of business, and the molds were stored in a basement for several years. One set of dishes was owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York which loaned it to the Museum of Contemporary Crafts for an exhibition in 1966. Entrepreneur Alan Heller, who saw the exhibit, decided to import the dishware to the United States. He traveled to Milan, found the molds, and revived production.

Beginning in the 1920s, industrial designers were drawn to the seemingly unlimited possibilities of plastics. Still, the nature of compression molding made certain complexities of design difficult, leading many designers to favor curved designs. With the development of brighter colored and more lightweight plastics, and especially with the introduction of injection molding and new types of plastics, more and more plastic house wares-including every sort of dish- began to be produced. From the mid-1940s a seemingly nonstop stream of tableware was produced and promoted, including Daka-Ware (Harry Davies Molding Company), Lustro-Ware (Columbus Plastics Products), Boltaware (Bolta Plastics), Tupperware (Tupper Corporation), and scores of others.

Many of these lines were well designed but inexpensive products made of polystyrene and the flexible polyethylene, both plastics popularized after World War II. Melamine, however, is a hard, thermosetting plastic made from melamine and formaldehyde which in the late 1940s saw a surge of popularity that challenged traditional ceramics in the marketplace. Already in 1933, the potentials of melamine were being developed by the American Cyanamid Company, and during World War II the break-resistant dinnerware was widely used on navy ships. After the war, fine lines of melamine dinnerware were created, in part because the plastic was also odorless and tasteless. American Cyanamid retained noted-designer Russel Wright to develop melamine designs, especially for restaurant use. Eventually, Melmac dinnerware was produced and marketed in 1951. A "Russel Wright Residential" line was promoted by the Northern Industrial Chemical Co. in 1953, by which time many molders were producing melamine dishes. By 1957 the Melamine Council, an industry group, included eleven manufacturers of melamine dinnerware brands. Hellerware, also designed for melamine, came out of this tradition. The stackable nature of Hellerware, however, is an indication of the growing popularity in the 1960s of melamine picnic and camping dishes, in part because they are lightweight and easy to clean.

Vignelli Associates was founded in New York in 1971 by Italian-born designers Lella and Massimo Vignelli. The company offered a range of consultancy services including corporate and visual communication design, as well as industrial and furniture design. Their designs have embraced corporate identity design alongside exhibition, furniture, product, and publication design. In addition to Hellerware, their designs in plastic include the packaging for Nuts & Bolts mens toiletries (1968) and the Handkerchief chair for Knoll (1982), molded in reinforced plastic. Their work has been awarded the Compasso d'Oro in 1964 and 1988, and a gold medal from the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts, established 1914) in 1983. In September 2010 The Lella and Massimo Vignelli helped establish the Vignelli Center for Design Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).