Why People Are Camping Out at Target for the Valentine’s Stanley Tumbler

The next time you go to Target, you might need to wear a helmet. The store sells them, come to think of it.

The reason is that this week, Stanley, the company known for trendy tumblers, released special-edition cups — a collaboration with Starbucks — for Valentine’s Day. It caused tumult at multiple Target stores across the country. There has been a steady stream of social-media videos showing customers nearly coming to blows or otherwise overrunning the store to obtain their own 40-ounce pink or red water tumbler. Some are even camping — camping! — outside Target to make sure they can get their hands on one.

If this all sounds like we are speaking a different language or if you are confused by the videos that have popped up on your social-media feeds, we’re here to help.

Who is Stanley?

Well, Kubrick was the legendary director. Then there’s Flat Stanley, who traveled around the world after an unfortunate encounter with a bulletin board, and then there’s —

No, the cups.

Oh, sorry. Of course. Stanley, which mostly sells bottle-adjacent products and is headquartered in Seattle, has been around for more than a century and was the brainchild of the inventor William Stanley Jr. In 1913, he combined vacuum insulation and steel to create a water bottle. For most of its existence, the company targeted outdoorsy types.

But in 2017, there was a shift. The Buy Guide, a blog that recommends products for consumers, featured Stanley’s 40-ounce Quencher cup, calling it “the one” in an Instagram post. This was a stroke of luck for Stanley, which was not promoting the bottle heavily. It was a little-noticed product when it was released the year before. Two years later, the team behind The Buy Guide — two sisters and their cousin — reached a deal with Stanley to sell the cups wholesale and quickly sold 5,000 units.

“The brand really shifted from marketing mostly to men to women now,” Shelley E. Kohan, a retail management professor at Syracuse University, said of Stanley.

The partnership continued to be exponentially more fruitful, as The Buy Guide helped bring Stanley products to their audience of mostly women. And Stanley made the Quencher a priority, releasing it in different colors.

(Our own Wirecutter review: “The Adventure Quencher is good! But it’s also overhyped and, depending on how you plan to use the tumbler, it might not be a worthwhile purchase.”)

What role did social media play in Stanley’s recent rise?

Influencer culture has been central. Content creators picked up on the bottle and began sharing it, particularly on TikTok and Instagram. #StanleyTumbler became a popular hashtag, used millions of times. The cup has become a fashion accessory and a collector’s item.

“The influencers are big-time influencers, but it’s also you and me, the consumer, making videos about their experiences with the Stanley cup as an example,” Ms. Kohan said.

Not to mention, drinking water has become a strange social-media thing in itself. There is a corner of TikTok called WaterTok where people demonstrate various fancy ways to hydrate. (Aliens looking to invade us, baffling social trends come with the package!)

In 2020, the Quencher became Stanley’s top-selling product, which coincided with the hiring of Terence Reilly, a former executive of the footwear company Crocs, as the company’s president. The product’s sales skyrocketed by 275 percent from 2020 to 2021.

Haha. A Stanley Cup.

Everyone has already made that joke. It’s not really a cup!

OK, fine. What’s up with the Valentine’s Day cups?

It’s never too early to hydrate for love, which is why, I suppose, the special-edition cup was released at the end of December, more than a month before Valentine’s Day. Target is marketing the limited-edition cups as part of an “exclusive Galentine’s Collection.”

The $45 dollar cups are sold out on Target’s website. (The company did not respond to an inquiry about how many cups had already been sold or whether others would be produced.)

There’s a scarcity effect here on consumers, particularly women, which has driven the craze, Ms. Long said.

“Now this reusable cup becomes a fashion item accessory like a handbag or belt,” Ms. Long said. Add a special color or a limited edition, and it’s a “fashion frenzy,” she added.

You can always buy the tumblers on eBay, where they are currently selling for up to several hundred dollars in some cases.

Is there a new water-bottle king on the horizon?

The water bottle, since it has become a fashion accessory, has become a status symbol. The colors matter. The size and shape and how it goes with an outfit. And status symbols are malleable as trends shift. (The term “emotional-support water bottle” is not unheard-of.)

Enter Owala, a water-bottle brand that started in 2020 and has become an In thirst quencher. The bottle that has become most popular is its FreeSip model, which is designed to either let you sip or chug as you see fit. Hashtags including the brand’s name have been viewed this year at least tens of millions of times on TikTok alone. (The company has 150,000 followers there and 244,000 on Instagram.) And there has been some celebrity boost: Both Lance Bass of ‘N Sync fame and the author Samantha Irby listed Owala bottles among their favorite items in The Strategist.

On Amazon, tens of thousands of people have left the bottles five-star reviews.

The company hasn’t yet caused camping outside of department stores, but it’s still early in 2024.