Face-Planting For Stanley: How Great Big Adult Sippy Cups Conquered The World

On New Year’s Eve, Meagan Howard waited outside a Target in Louisiana to buy this season’s most coveted accessory: a shiny pink travel tumbler called the Starbucks x Stanley Quencher. When the doors opened, Howard took off like a race horse leaving the starting gate, running as fast as her Uggs could carry her. Then the 33-year-old felt herself slipping, ultimately face-planting on the cold tile floor. “My mom saw me fall down, and she said it took a while for me to get back up,” Howard, who is a first-grade teacher, said. “But it’s worth it, I think. I got the cup.” The cup she got was a limited-edition version of a 40-ounce stainless steel, vacuum-insulated jug with a straw made by Stanley, the 110-year-old brand usually associated with outdoor enthusiasts or dads with boats. Though they’re sold out now, Starbucks x Stanley Quencher mania lives on in TikTok videos shot on New Year’s Eve, showing grown adults stampeding toward displays in Targets across the country.

How did a $45 water jug spark such chaos? (And since when do water jugs cost $45?) The thirst for Stanleys really took off in early 2022, when the product was profiled in the New York Times. Influencers on #WaterTok, a corner of TikTok where people with very plump-looking skin take hydration seriously, praised the cup as a holy grail, listing out its purported virtues: it fits in a car’s cup holder and has a straw for easy drinking, and a handle too. From there it caught on with the people most likely to succumb to targeted ads or influencer endorsements. The New York Times called Stanley fans a “sisterhood”, reversing decades of macho branding.

The TikTok love translated into sales: CNBC estimates the company made over $750m last year, compared with an average of $70m a year before 2020. On social media, users show off their collections, flaunting cupboards filled with cups in every hue. Many have also bought accessories – such as plastic “spill stoppers” that seal up straws – to personalize their Stanleys. By January 2024, TikTok videos of Stanley cups had been viewed over 201.4m times.

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You might expect JB MacKinnon, a writer who titled his latest book The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Gives Us a Better Life and a Greener World, to rail against the Stanley tumbler. (As a Canadian, MacKinnon refuses to call it the Stanley cup, because, well, you know.) Sure, scenes of women racing each other down Target aisles to get their Stanleys represents the uglier side of late-stage capitalism: our unquenchable desire for more, more, more makes villains out of all of us. But MacKinnon wonders why certain buzzy products get all the hate, when every item produced and sold on a mass scale contributes to the climate crisis. “I get a little bit tired of the finger-wagging,” he said. “We seem to be selective about who we point out as the people deepest involved in consumer frenzies.” MacKinnon doesn’t let Stanley – or any eco-trend – off the hook, though. It’s a predictable cycle: first, a buzzy, supposedly green product comes out, with the added benefit that using it makes you a Good Person Who Cares About the World. Demand rises, production ramps up, and people over-consume the item.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/12/stanley-cups-tumblers-water-bottle-trend