A good cup is a thing of beauty. Be it a handmade ceramic or a thick-walled diner mug or even a tumbler that fits perfectly into your cup holder, we all have a favorite drinking vessel. And for Gen Z, there is but one option: the Stanley Quencher, specifically the Quencher H2.0 FlowState Tumbler. The stainless steel vacuum insulated tumbler is having a moment right now with the TikTok generation, and limited releases, like the recent Starbucks collab, are causing people to lose their ever-loving minds.
It’s Beatles Mania, it’s Beanie Babies, it’s Tickle Me Elmo. It’s… a tumbler. They’re good mugs, sure; I know someone who swears by his four-decade-old forest green Stanley thermos his dad passed down to him. But it’s hard to say what exactly about the Quencher has captivated a generation of consumers. There was a viral video of the Stanley tumbler surviving a car fire (with a cottage industry of truthers stating the whole thing was staged). Whatever it is, the numbers don’t lie. CNBC reports that Stanley went from earning $70 million in 2019 all the way up to $750 million in 2023 on the back of the Quencher’s popularity.
The uptick in sales has come primarily from young women, or “Stanley cup girlies” as some refer to themselves according to Bon Appetit. There’s an entire subsection of TikTok devoted to folks showing off their collection of Quenchers in a variety of colors—having the right color Quencher to match your outfit is a consideration many people make it seems.
Bon Appetit describes it as “Supreme-grade fanaticism,” with new color drops selling out almost as soon as they are made available. Some limited releases of the 40oz tumbler are in-person only, leaving many fans to go to great lengths to get their hands on one. When the new pink Starbucks Quencher mug was released at Starbucks locations inside Targets on Wednesday, January 3rd, some individuals started camping out the night before in order to be first in line (and posted about it on TikTok). The result, according to Today, was “mayhem”. There have been reports of fights breaking out, even folks jumping over counters to steal the tumblers.
The resale market already has the Starbucks Quencher listed for as much as $300, and the Better Business Bureau is already advising against too-good-to-be-true deals. (There is apparently a lot of fraud in the Quencher aftermarket.)
It’s all enough to make a Zojirushi Millennial feel very, very, very old.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
