Where the hell did Stanley Cups come from?

Explaining a stupid phenomenon

Probably by now you’ve heard of the Stanley Cup.

Depending who you talk to they’re a status symbol, a total waste of space, a clever sustainable product, or amoral landfill.

That’s a lot of debate for what is, essentially, a fancy $80 insulated bottle.

Until now, I’ve avoided the conversation entirely. As someone who’s happy to get their hydration from morning condensation on car windows and old stagnant puddles, I find it hard to get excited about drink bottles.

But when I started to hear about shopping centre stampedes for limited edition colours, even I got curious.

How did the world become obsessed with something so mundane?

Let’s start at the beginning. The Stanley company are not new kids on the block. They’ve been around for more than 100 years and have, up until very recently, made products targeted at construction workers and outdoorsy men. Their specialty was making cups which kept drinks really cold.

You know, like every insulated bottle ever.

They did well enough. In 2019 they were making $70 million in revenue. But in 2023? It was over $700 million.

What happened? Most people call Stanley Cups a viral TikTok product, but their ascension can be traced back to Instagram. Specifically, a page called “The Buy Guide” run by three women.

As the name suggests, their account is a curated feed of recommended products. Way back in 2017, the Stanley Cup made their list.

This is what exercise classes look like in my nighmares

It didn’t take long for the Buy Guide to notice that every time they posted about the behemoth-sized 1.1 litre “Quencher” cup, Stanley would quickly sell out. For whatever reason their audience, which was heavily comprised with Mormon Utah mothers, loved the product.

The Buy Guide believed in the Quencher enough to broker a wholesale deal with Stanley to sell the cups on their website. Their advocacy even stopped the line from being discontinued in 2019.

Women, they taught Stanley, existed. They also like to buy stuff.

Of course this sounded like dangerous witch talk. Drinking water from large cups was for men. Not weak-wristed women. But despite some hesitation, brave executives from the parent company let these women into their offices to learn more about their crazy, oestrogen-tainted ideas.

When talking to the New Yorker, The Buy Guide recalled some executives being less than enthusiastic about meeting the “blogger girls”. Nonetheless, their pitch for Stanley to offer affiliate marketing deals to blogs and influencers was successful.

Thanks to affiliate marketing, approved influencers who successfully spruiked the Stanley Cup to their followers got a percentage of those sales. This turned out to be a good business deal. Apparently there was a 1.1 litre tumbler-sized hole in many women’s lives and Stanley was there to fill it up.

Is it any surprise people’s social media feeds were suddenly flooded with these cups?

There are other things that helped, of course. Stanley extended the colour range, started marketing more heavily towards women, and capped sales on some products to create false scarcity.

Stanley also got really luck when some woman’s car caught on fire.

The woman filmed a TikTok video of the burnt out remains of her vehicle and plucked a relatively unscathed Stanley Cup from the centre console. She then unscrewed the lid she showed the camera there was unmelted ice inside.

This caused everyone in the Stanley marketing department to simultaneously reach climax.

Once they’d cleaned themselves up and had a cigarette, they bought the woman a new car. Of course that story also went viral, resulting in a second load of quencher-sized ejaculate.

What none of this really explains, though, is why Stanley Cups in particular made it through the zeitgeist. Sure, they’re big and colourful. Sure they keep drinks cold. But these are the attributes of a lot of products.

It’s likely they just hit the centre of several intertwining desires in just the right way, at just the right time. They’re a brand with status, a passionate online community, and customisation through colours and accessories. They also come with a promise: if you buy these cups you’ll be a better, more-hydrated version of yourself.

You can even buy your cup a little jacket

The Stanley Cup’s social media infamy also happened to coincide with a time of great economic uncertainty. The Lipstick Effect theory is that small indulgences increase during recessions. So while a holiday might be out of the question, a very fancy cup is an unusual but permissible treat. A miniature dopamine rush to counteract the crushing day-to-day stresses.

For all I know Stanley Cups are the key to healthier, more fulfilled life. But I suspect when that little dopamine hit wears off, all you’ll have is a luridly-coloured, top-heavy water bottle with a leaky lid that’s is too heavy to carry around comfortably. It’s destined for the back of the cupboard before it reaches your home.

But don’t worry, by the time a thin layer of dust has settled on the lid a new trend will have swept in to take its place.

We rinse. We repeat. Hopefully the next fad is also dishwasher safe.