What’s with the Stanley cup craze? Trendy water bottles from the Hydro Flask to the Owala, and what your choice says about you
- The new year has barely begun, yet already some marketers have proclaimed 2024 the ‘Year of the Water Bottle’
- The Stanley cup is this year’s most coveted, but it is just the latest in a long line of bottle trends. Before Stanley, it was Hydro Flask. Before that, S’well
If you have spent any amount of time on TikTok or talking to your 12-year-old niece, you have probably heard of the Stanley cup by now. The 40 ounce (1.2 litre) insulated tumbler with a handle has led to long queues, fights and a crazy resale market.
We are only days into the new year, and already some marketers have gone so far as to proclaim 2024 the “Year of the Water Bottle”. Hydration vessels, they say, may be this year’s “most covetable, most fashionable accessory”.
But the Stanley cup is just the latest in a long line of trendy water bottles, its popularity aided by social media virality and it being declared cool by the arbitrators of the internet – teenage girls. Before Stanley, it was the Hydro Flask, and before that S’well. Owala took off on social media last year as well.
Given the fierce devotion with which some fans wield their Stanleys, we ask if water bottles have really become the latest extensions of our identities?
1 Stanley: the trendsetter
One of the items most coveted by tweens across America currently, it seems, is the Stanley Quencher tumbler.