Stanley cup craze explained: Why everyone is going feral for a water bottle right now

Right then, if your FYP on TikTok is anything at all like mine then you’ve been driven absolutely MAD by videos of people obsessing over Stanley cups. We’ve got people building literal WALLS of the things, people fighting to get their hands on the new limited edition colours and reselling them for thousands, people laminating the labels of the cups and buying all sorts of weird accessories for the water bottle.

Stanley cups have kind of been THE item to have over the past couple of months on TikTok, but they’ve really started to blow up everywhere over the last week or so.

But what actually is the Stanley cup craze all about and how did it start?

Emotional support water bottles have been a thing for ages. At first, it was the Chilly’s bottles and then the Love Island water bottles for a bit and obviously the Hydroflask era. But even though the Stanley Quencher was brought out in 2016, they really started getting popular over the last year.

The Stanley brand in general goes way back, with the first Stanley bottle being released way over 100 years ago in 1913. The brand was also initially marketed to campers and outdoorsy people until they made the switch to introduce lots of new colours to appeal to new types of people.

But the Stanley cup that people are literally going insane for today is the 40-ounce tumbler which costs upwards of £44 and comes in a million different colours. They’re also kind of huge and weigh an absolute ton when you fill them with water.

The hype really started on TikTok when influencers started sharing how much water they could fit in the tumblers, how they could still fit in car cupholders and how it was making them drink so much water. The hashtag #Stanleycup has over seven BILLION views on TikTok.

But now selling out in minutes every time there’s a restock, and TikTok shop being absolutely FULL of Stanley dupes, the water bottles have definitely become more of a collector’s item that everyone obsesses over. And it’s all due to social media influencing. The water bottles are just the newest thing that you get told you simply HAVE to have enough times until you desperately want one.

You can even buy accessories for your water bottle now including snack trays and little zip-up pouches. Wild.

The craze is also seen in the company’s profit which went from making around $70 million a year in 2020 to over $750 million per year.

But the reason people have gone even more crazy for them over the last week is that Stanley released a new Valentine’s limited edition cup in collaboration with Starbucks.

People in the US have been camping outside Target overnight to try and get the new limited edition Stanleys and a video on TMZ shows a man trying to jump over the counter to get a box of the bottles. They’re also being resold for around £350.

Hannah Shamji is a consumer insights expert and she said that the craze and obsession over the cups is all about wanting to fit in. She said: “You don’t stampede in Target for a tumbler. What people are buying is a sense of belonging. People want to be in the know or fit in. Status is a really powerful driver of purchase behaviour because it tugs on a very fundamental human need: to belong.”

She told HuffPost: “Even though fans can sing its praises, people are not buying a Stanley cup because of its features and functionality. That’s not why the cup sold out in minutes or why people buy multiple colours when you really only necessitate one water bottle.

“I saw one woman on TikTok with a cup in every colour: The full rainbow of Stanleys. She’s not buying on need or because the Stanley is objectively better than the Yeti. It’s not a logical or calculated purchase decision. It’s a feeling-based one.”

So basically the trend mostly came from TikTok and as more and more people posted videos with their Stanleys it made more and more people want them until it became a massive craze. But now people are trying to cancel them for giving you wrinkles. Yikes.

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