All About the Stanley Cup Craze

by Milo Schwartz, Cara Horsman and Aaron Oyefeso

Imagine waiting in line for hours and hours on line to get into Target, waiting overnight, and camping outside in the parking lot. When you get into the store, you realize that you waited all this time for a giant pink and red cup?! The Stanley Cup Craze has brought teenagers and millennials together in their hunger for collecting these cups, all thanks to TikTok.

Back in November 2022, a TikTok user known as @danimarielettering uploaded a video showcasing her car’s wreckage after a major car fire. Everything in the car appears to be black with smoke, except for the brown Stanley Cup with the straw sticking out and placed neatly in a cup holder. The influencer also showed that ice was still frozen inside the tumbler. 

This sparked a lot of excitement around the brand of cup. Danielle’s unfortunate situation involving her car soon turned into the cup being one of the most popular trends on the internet. The video got so popular that the CEO of Stanley sent Danielle a brand-new car!

Ever since this incident occurred, the Stanley Cup has only become more popular than ever. Students parade around their new cups, showing their overpriced cups off to their friends. A certain lineup of Stanleys cost eight hundred dollars, resulting from limited edition Starbucks-branded cups released last year. They sold out almost immediately! 

Due to this newfound popularity, Stanley’s sales skyrocketed from 75 million dollars to 750 million dollars annually in 2023. Some people don’t even fill their cups, and walk around with them empty just to show off. 

“There's this video of a bunch of people running to the Stanley cups and pushing and shoving just to get a cup. People probably got injured and hit in the head during it,“ Ella Oyefeso stated, a student who doesn’t attend MS 447.

Stanley Cups have been around since 1913, and had a primary demographic of ‘blue-collar workers,’ but they have skyrocketed in popularity as teenagers and millennial women united in their shared craze for these cups.

The love for the cups doesn't stop at the actual liquid holder. Etsy is home to accessories for the cups as well. Small little hats and boots, keychains, nameplates, and accessories for humans in cup size are on the market.

Though this may sound crazy, there are some benefits to the cup if you use it properly. Online resources claim that the cups can keep liquids hot or cold for up to 11 hours, and in some cases keep ice for up to 2 days. The reason for the cups being so expensive is how expensive the stainless steel and insulators inside the cups are. Amelia Cookmack-Ray in class 701 said that, “the [Stanley] cup keeps my water cold. It’s really big, which is great, but it leaks sometimes.”

Due to the popularity and versatility surrounding the Stanley Cup, it has become a household item people will continue to fight and withstand nature for.