Recently, a shopping blitz for the Valentine's Day editions of the chunky, insulated Stanley tumbler rolled across the internet into big-box stores and across middle schools. What this says about America is, well, sizable.
Background For the last few years, Stanley, the 100-plus-year-old company behind those green thermoses from camping trips of yore, has been invading the consumer consciousness. First, the company's Quencher tumbler was featured on an affiliate marketing site run by a gaggle of mom influencers. Social media influencers soon hopped aboard, and Stanley sales catapulted.Â
The latest Fast forward to early 2024, when Stanley released a Valentine's Day edition of the Quencher tumbler. Consumerist mayhem ensued. Some cultural critics were blinkered. "There is no real reason any of this happened or at least no reason that will feel satisfying to you," said Amanda Mull in The Atlantic. As if these things just happen — not, rather, because there are forces that obligate such trends. Â
"What might appear to be an organic phenomenon … is actually an engineered corporate crossover," said Kyle Chayka, writing about the boardroom calculations behind Stanley's rise, in The New Yorker.
The reaction One aftereffect Stanley likely did not forecast was the supervening middle school bullying. Batches of preteens across the country became obsessed with Stanley tumblers and, in January, broadcasted their new scores when they returned from holiday break.Â
A powder keg of class tensions then detonated when kids without Stanleys or with knockoff versions started being bullied. And so began a moral struggle across a variety of social media platforms over whether parents should buy a tumbler for their Stanley-less child or let that child deal with the bullying.
Cultural critic Ashtin Berry gathered the threads on Instagram. She tied together capitalism, white supremacy, resource-hoarding and weaponized incompetence in a series of posts. In particular, she had words for those parents who threw their hands in the air, defeated, and bought their child a Quencher. "Everyone's parenting or lack thereof affects other children, Berry said. "It's wild to act as if adults have no power to guide and push against the harms of consumption." |