The Stanley Cup: from sperm transporter to lifestyle product

The Stanley Cup doesn’t look spectacular at first glance. Neither does the second. Still, the thermal mug is currently more popular than any other on the market. Hundreds of people in America are currently lining up in front of stores to get their hands on the new special edition cup. But why is that?

The Stanley Cup was launched in 1913 by William Stanley Jr. Later, the steel insulated bottle was used by pilots during World War II. There were also benefits for science and animal husbandry: human organs and bull sperm were transported in the cup.

It was not until 2002 that the quencher version came onto the market, with the Röhrli that makes the cup so popular today.

However, the Röhrli variant did not sell as hoped and production was stopped again in 2019. Much to the indignation of the writers of the blog ‘The Buy Guide’. The women bought 5,000 cups at their own risk. They relaunched the cup as a lifestyle product and sold out in no time. Stanley then resumed production and the Stanley Cup became the hype item it is today.

The Stanley Cup was first hyped – like so many things these days – on TikTok. With the hashtag #watertok, the makers showed how they made their water spicier so that they could drink more. Usually so many syrups and powders were added that you could no longer speak of water.

But it was through this community that the Stanley Cup became mainstream, as the women often owned cup collections worth thousands of dollars.

The cup had its big breakthrough after a TikTok by Danielle Marie. Her car burned down in an accident. In a video, she showed the disaster and pointed out that the Stanley Cup she had in the car was completely intact and even had unmelted ice in it.

The video immediately went viral and has been viewed more than 94 million times today. Stanley took advantage of the opportunity and attracted even more attention when the company not only gave Danielle a new Stanley Cup, but also replaced her car.

Since then, Stanley not only has popular drinking bottles, but also a reputation as a cool company. This is now being abused. The company launched a special Valentine’s Day edition of their cup together with Starbucks.

This led to hundreds of people camping out in front of the Target supermarket to get their hands on one of the limited edition cups. Because: on Ebay or XStock the bottle, which costs about 40 francs, is sold for just under 400 francs. This also led to some trying to obtain the special edition illegally. A man tried to steal an entire box.