are these things really collectible or are you searching for your identity?
a genuine question by pikachu, the kid.
It is 2024 and the first major hooplah is over a goddamn water bottle.
With all the shit going on, I can’t believe people are hyperfocused on this shit, but this is just an evolution.
Before the entire world shut down when I was in my 3rd year of university, I was taken aback by the popularity of a novel water bottle made by a then-unknown company called Hydroflask.
I’m sure you and I have seen them everywhere; they were sold at Dick’s Sporting Goods for about $30-50 depending on size and they all came in vibrant colors that were a canvas to put stickers on, but best of all - they were effective vessels to keep your water in.
Some people attested that it made plain old water taste like Fiji (yeah, no fuckin way; that’s bullshit), but you paid for the fact that ice cubes in the bottle retained their shape by the end of the day.
Copycats came their way - admittedly, I use a knockoff as my gym bottle, but 4-5 years and a whole pandemic later, such a trend did not just move on - it mutated.
Those with the shortest pulse on the internet by now have heard at least a whisper about the new phenomena called the Stanley Cups. No, not the trophy that belongs in the hands of my New Jersey Devils, but the damn travel mug-looking thing that has young, sheltered, and sheltering suburban women in a chokehold.
The kids have moved on from the S’well bottles to the Hydroflask, and when I thought that it would be enough; we are witnessing suburbanite-on-suburbanite violence at Target over travel mugs that sell for up to four times the MSRP on places like eBay and StockX.
I am going to interject actually because I know that some of you are thinking “What are you talking about now? I thought this was a conversation about water bottles.”
There are a few things that I witnessed with how people treated Stanley Cups that I think are very important to mention:
First things first is the overall collectibility of Stanley’s. If we rewind back to the Hydroflask days (which wasn’t that long ago in actuality), lots of people treated it like an appliance. They came in colors, but if I wanted a wide-mouth 32 oz bottle in a color like hot pink, sky blue, or black, I would be more than able to buy them at Dick’s.
Though there were so-called “limited edition” versions of Hydroflasks, they weren’t truly limited edition.
If special Hydroflasks were GR Jordan 1s, limited edition Stanleys would be like a special collaboration model.
At least that’s how the company is treating it.
I will have to explain this with a little storytime:
By 2009, the effects of the recession began to take a hit and change the habits of many Americans, including those who consider themselves to be very fashion-forward. Many fashion brands took a hit to their sales, but it was the start of the bubbling up for a New York skate brand named Supreme.
James Jebbia, the founder of the infamous skatewear brand was asked in an Interview magazine article that year how the brand was surviving the recession, and he laid out the game plan for how the brand stayed successful.
“We didn’t plan for a financial crisis, but we were already working hard, trying to make a really good product, and we’ve always tried to keep our prices as reasonable as we can,” Jebbia said. “I’ve been quite conservative in what we’ve ordered. We’ve never really been supply-demand anyway. […] But if we can sell 600, I make 400.”
**IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: THE PERSON INTERVIEWED IN THE EMBED MTV JAPAN CLIP IS NOT JAMES JEBBIA, HIS 2009 INTERVIEW WITH INTERVIEW MAG CAN BE FOUND HERE.**
Though Supreme is known for its high-dollar markup on resale marketplaces like eBay and StockX, it wasn’t like that in the beginning and is the particular one aspect as to why Stanley has this huge following now - having not only a good product but an accessible product.
According to Jebbia, he noticed a critical hole that was left out by the skateboarding brands that sold equipment at Supreme.
“All of the clothing that the skate companies put out was crap. These companies had to sell to a wide range of people, and a lot of them were very young. When people think of skaters, they think of, like, the 12- or 13- or 14-year-old kid. But in New York, it was the 18-to-24-year-old hardcore kid who wasn’t wearing any skate stuff,” said Jebbia. “They’d wear a hat or whatever, but they wouldn’t wear the clothing, because it would fit badly and was bad quality, and skaters want to look good and pick up girls. So we slowly started making our own stuff.”
“Our business is really good. We didn’t plan for a financial crisis, but we were already working hard, trying to make a really good product, and we’ve always tried to keep our prices as reasonable as we can.”
Stanley 1913’s Quencher H2.0 Flowstate Tumbler in 40 oz, a.k.a, the ‘Stanley Cup’ has an MSRP of $45. Similarly, a Supreme T-shirt costs $48.
Both of these things are not cheap but are also not extremely prohibitively expensive either. You do get a quality product for what you pay for, but what they are selling to you is a feeling.
Sure, you can get a similar-looking tumbler at Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, or Walmart that holds ice in cube form for an equivalent or longer time, but they won’t elicit the same sort of feeling as getting a Stanley.
It’s the feeling of getting in on the in thing, the feeling that you can say “This shit is Supreme, motherfucker,” or whatever you do with Stanley cups; but you get my point right?
I mention Supreme because I have seen many contemporaries compare this phenomenon to streetwear and sneaker culture, where utility items like shoes or simple t-shirts are elevated to a status symbol and artificial scarcity creates a demand that elevates such status.
This sort of phenomenon is proof that in countries like the United States, many in the populace do not have many unique signifiers of culture that run skin deep beside the commodities we consume.
Our identity is reduced to what we see visually and not what is skin deep.
As someone who used to pack Pellegrino and Perrier bottles in my lunch box in high school to look “fancy,” I get it. There is a massive difference between liking something because something tastes good or is a quality, durable product and something that is there for hype.
This shit is not new, this shit has been going on with sneakers, video games, electronics, and streetwear and honestly, this phenomenon is seen through such a different lens because many of the people “into this thing” are primarily white women, which I feel is very misogynistic.
But if you want my actual opinion on the Stanley Cups from a purely product standpoint though, I’ll say it.
Zojirushi, Takeya, Yeti, Hydro Flask, Stanley - they all do the same fuckin thing. If you can’t fit a Hydroflask in your car’s cupholders, that’s a skill issue.
spend your Christmas money wisely, kids.
ingat.