I work from home and drink from mugs and I don’t tiktok, so this whole trendy cup thing is really confusing me.
Do they uncurse bad water or something?
- Good quality product
- Suddenly gets popular
- Ramp up production
- Expand product range
- Quality is now shit
- “Anon have you heard of X, they’re amazing!!!”
(Edit: sorry, I get frustrated by trends)
It doesn’t make sense to try to sell a quality product when the demand is based on a fad.
Trendy = bad for the consumer as a principle but it’s not as if we have time to constantly second guess everything (without going crazy).
Birkenstock, DocMartens, Red Wing, Church’s Kitchenaid, every “luxury” brand you can think of and most products listed on BIFL threads… (Also crocs but I feel they sell at such a low price point to begin with that it doesn’t warrant cheaping out. Fake crocs are cheaper and just as durable though.)
All these brands get ultra-popular because one product goes viral which they start producing cheaply and use to grow their business and later, if succesful bring out a “heritage”, “pro” or “classic” line for a higher price than the model was going for originally.
So you’ll see some things about how it fits in a car cup holder (Lots of others do too) or how one survived a fire (This is just how insulated bottles like that tend to work) and those are all… good enough… but they’re not why there’s so much hype. The Hype has been carefully engineered. The head of the company is a Marketing guy, and he basically imported Sneaker culture into a new industry. Stanley Cups are released on a limited basis, with partnerships producing only limited supplies. It’s induced scarcity and marketing, people are rushing to get one because if they don’t rush, there won’t be any more, and that makes more people want to rush to get one.
It’s just an insulated cup that is intentionally hard to find sometimes. That’s all.
Basically Commodity Fetishism. There’s nothing inherently mystical about a Stanley Cup, but thanks to artificial scarcity and hype culture it’s now in demand.
I had no idea about them until my kid asked for one. She actually likes drinking water with it so it’s a win as far as I’m concerned.
Knowing nothing about the trend, I would look at how TikTok makes their money (advertising), and just sort of fill in the blanks from there.
One Ex-Vice Editor made a video about it: https://youtu.be/vrUWQ56GeyU
I think you mean Vox, not Vice (although if he was Vice too, apologies)
You’re right! Not that many news sites starting with V…
It’s just a tiktok fad, the Guardian had a good article recently. Normal conspicuous consumption nonsense. They’re good quality, have been around for a long time, but now they come in colors. The cynical take would be that it is just the most recent way to visually confirm that someone has no individual personality without actually having to talk to them.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/12/stanley-cups-tumblers-water-bottle-trend
To be fair, I have no individual personality even without a Stanley cup.
The more cynical take is from a teacher perspective: yay we’ve regressed back to non sealing straws. And they’re easier to knock over.
It’s also the biggest excuse to leave class now. Gotta be constantly refilling.
From the article,
“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.”
Haha. Yeah, she was running through the store to go buy one for herself…
Little first graders aren’t the ones carrying these to class, it’s rich teens and preteens. And they already owned functioning bottles, so it’s wasteful, too.
Again from the article
"Just as every girl had a Hydro Flask to match their backpack, her mom would have her own color of the Quencher.”
They partnered with ‘influencers’ i.e. idiots, to promote this, it worked.
This moron, who is a Teacher, was proud of her injuries. “But it’s worth it, I think. I got the cup.”
I would not let her go to the toilet on her own without a rope.
I could drink a slab of beer and still have better judgement that she does.
I think you’re confused to my point.
I’m saying older kids are bringing Stanley’s to school now, but they’re way less functional for students than those hydroflasks (22oz versions, which is what your quote was talking about… the trend from a few years ago – see VSCO girls) As a teacher watching the trend happen, because the trends always hit extra hard in American middle school, these are a particular annoyance.
Her first graders have the 22oz or less hydroflasks that close the straw so they don’t spill, fit in the backpacks, and don’t take much space on desks. The new trend is specifically 44oz Stanley’s with exposed straw and skinny base to fit in cupholders. These are not conducive features for a classroom-transitioning school setting is ALL I’m saying.
I get that you’re angry at this other teacher for wanting one for herself and you think she’s a moron. Trends and influencers are not new things. There’s always a trend. The teacher and her mom from the article are both adults, though, so nothing to do with anything I’m talking about.
Well you said this ‘it’s rich teens and preteens’ which is not at all the target market, nor what is talked about in the article. They may be buying them, but the driver is the person with bruised knees in the linked article.
Apologies if I am getting this wrong, I frequently do.
They used to be better. Or at least, the thermos were. I got a modern stanley thermos, from 2020. Holds temp fairly well, but not great. Hot coffee brewed fresh in the morning turns lukewarm by night. Ice cold water turns room temp in a day (no idea why that is).
A girl I used to date still had her father’s stanley thermos from the 70s-80s. That fucker could hold temp for ages. Apparently the company got bought out, and replaced the graphite lining with air. Or something like that.
Still, miles better than anything I can get locally.
I recently bought a Bubba brand thermos and even in dinner the ice I added stayed ice for almost 2 days. That was when I left it in the car. Love the thing, it just works very well and isn’t too pricey.
Bubba brand thermos
This sounds suspiciously like a brand found only in the American South.
I don’t know about their current quality, they were a buy it for life thing, I have my grandfathers kicking around somewhere, bought in the '50’s. I still use it.
Wait, you’re not taking about hockey?
I thought the same thing at first and was really confused then I found out they were taking about the drink cups and am even more confused.
This is the third post I’ve seen about Stanley cups and only now did I realize it had nothing to do with hockey. I was very confused how someone had spent $3000 on Stanley cups
Not a hockey fan, is that because it’s too cheap or too expensive?
I don’t know anything about hockey either, but I’m pretty sure “The Stanley Cup” is their big trophy.
Correct, and it’s a trophy you give back. The team doesn’t keep it, the players get time with it, but it’s been a tradition for over a century. The original is in Toronto Hockey hall of Fame, and the presentation cup is the one the teams win. After the bottom ring fills up with teams aver players who won the top ring is removed and put into the HHOF and a new blank is added at the bottom. Incredible tradition and I live every part of it.
I had no idea what you meant by rings so I had to look up a picture. Here’s Wikipedia’s picture for anyone else confused like me.
Ah yeah, my bad. The thanks for linking the picture and article!
They’re insulated water bottles that fit into a car cup holder (as long as your car doesn’t have two cup holders right next to each other, because it’s quite wide and it’d cover both).
There are many insulated water bottles out there, but this brand had one survive a car fire and that news took off on Tiktok.
I’d expect any decent insulated water bottle to hold up to a car fire the same way, because of the physics involved, but I suppose there are a lot of people out there who have only experienced bad water bottles.
I hope Stanley doesn’t cheap out and produce worse bottles to make a profit on the hype, because it seems like this is one of the few brands that still produces quality products.
