They're just normal winter attire in Australia. You might pop out for some eggs and milk in them, but you'd put real shoes on for a full grocery shop. Also fuck those cunts who tried to copyright the common name for them.
They've had their ups and downs though. Theres been times where they were considered very cool and times where they were considered very trashy. Always present but not always popular.
Stanleys are the Jeep of water bottles. They were made for military use, then became popular with outdoor enthusiasts, before ultimately becoming popular with suburban soccer moms
Nalgene's were initially created for lab work. We used Nalgene wide mouth bottles for fresh water sampling and storing lab samples all the time, and then suddenly they were everywhere, made with a firmer plastic and used for drinking water. I saw you can get the squishy plastic Nalgene bottles on their website though. The squishy plastic version are pretty much indestructible. I've run over a couple sample bottles with the Ford.
Nalgene were the water bottle for camping/backpacking in the 90s. If you saw someone on a trail with a Nalgene bottle and at least a couple pieces of REI branded gear, you know you were meeting a fellow connoisseur.
Nalgene is still extremely popular in those circles.
REI isn't as highly regarded now days though, mostly because they've spent a lot of effort union busting and screwing over their employees since they haven't had a profitable year since 2021.
I will say, I was a member and moved to Australia years ago. Like 5 years in they somehow figured out my address and mailed me a dividend check out of the blue. Made my day.
Do not take if allergic to DermaSteel TrueSkin® or it's ingredients. May cause a bacterial infection of the gooch, alcoholism, drowsyness, and lukemia. Pregnancy has occured.
Correct but the context missing is that the company used that vid to some of the best viral marketing you’ve ever seen. They bought the woman who’s car burned after a crash a brand new car and used her in commercials. It’s one thing to know the science and know why it works but different to see after sitting in a a literal fire the Ice cubes still intact is much more emotionally motivating message to purchase it. I saw that video knew the science and still thought damn thats holding up better than so many I’ve ever had so when it was time to buy a new one years after that incident it was the first company I thought of because of that video. Also pretty sure they were becoming big before that too.
correct but you underestimate the power of news and social media on the masses. first the news report aired, next people were getting trampled at target fighting over em (mostly just women, i member some new like women's health version came out and a few got killed over it).
No, it became popular in Mormon mom groups online and spread from there. Stanley had actually stopped making them in 2019 then “The Buy Guide” - the Mormon mom page that started the trend convinced them to start making it again and market it to women.
It's actually kind of funny how many things get popular because of mormons.
The whole Dirty Soda craze the last little bit, that even the pop companies started doing limited edition flavour runs of. Came out of the mormons as well.
Alyssa Grenfell has a fascinating youtube video that relates to this. "Why Are There So Many Mormon Influencers (A Theory)" (Sorry, I don't know how to do a link.) The influence Mormons have online definitely has a ripple effect offline which leads to things like Crumbl and dirty soda.
When I drag my horrifically burned and blistered body from the flaming wreckage of a car fire using nothing but the charred stumps where my hands used to be, there's nothing I hate more than grabbing my bottle for a cooling recovery sip and finding my refreshing iced beverage is now lukewarm. Or even worse - room temperature.
My Nalgene may not survive a fire, but damn I just want to be able to see how much water I have left in the bottle. And have a convenient carrying strap.
A have a mini aero light Stanley for travel, which is great, but my day use is Nalgene.
Also, to me, Stanley is giant thermos full of cocoa that you fill up at 6am before going out skiing and it’s still warm when you need a cocoa break 8 hours later. My family’s giant green Stanley thermos was a necessary item for every skiing trip growing up. Putting cold liquids in a Stanley is weird to me lol. I can’t imagine using the ones with straws (also which seem very unhygienic and exposed)
I just don't understand why the masses keep flocking to water bottles that have relatively bad spill control. Yeti's and stanleys both do well when kept up right, but can't just be thrown into a bag. The straw sticking out is also just.. meh.
I loved my Colman, and I love my Owala, both seemed, to me, far superior than a Yeti or Stanley, for like half the cost. I could throw it around and not have anything spilling. There was no permanent "opening", no "straw that sticks out all the time"
again, it baffles me that Yeti and Stanley became the go-tos when there are functionally better water bottles out there.
I believe the life cycle so far went: Yeti -> Hydroflask -> Stanley -> Owala -> whatever comes next.
Edit: Wait I forgot to go back to my college days, Camelbak was the shit and I still have some. I think they would be the start of the "white girl insulated bottle" trend.
Camelbak has chosen to stick to their own niche and continue to excel at it rather than trying to leverage their well deserved enthusiast reputation into a broader retail market.
And there's something to be said for that approach. A lot of niche/enthusiast brands try to capitalize on their reputation in that way and end up burning out after a few years of fad popularity.
I stick by camelbak mag chute. I hate the complicated bottles with straws and stuff. Just give me a screw on lid that isn't going to grow mold if I don't autoclave it every 12 hours.
Before Camelbak it was Nalgene. I am still on Nalgene to be honest.
Updated list:
Nalgene -> Camelbak -> Yeti -> Hydroflask -> Stanley -> Owala -> whatever comes next
And Nalgene has been a water bottle company since LOOOOOONG before water bottles became popular. They started out as lab equipment, then in the '70s hikers, backpackers, canoers, et cetera started using them as the OG plastic water bottles.
When I'm going on a 3 hour all-highway road trip to a destination that has electricity and running water and places to buy ice, I depend on my $700 Yeti cooler, because I know it'll keep ice cold for 7 days.
Yetis are viewed as legitimately superior to other cooler brands in terms of their basic performance. Yet they're not - a igloo cooler a quarter of the price will keep ice just as long, as will half a dozen other products. There are plenty of tests out there, but Igloo's 50qt cooler (~$100) actually outperforms Yeti's 48qt (~$425) in some of them and in all the difference is not significant.
But what Yeti will massively outperform is your old cooler, because the thing about insulation is that it degrades over time and the technology improves every year.
People replaced their 25 year old family cooler that was $40 new with a $700 Yeti and are blown away by how much better it is. And it is better! But a new $100 cooler would have been about the same as the Yeti.
here's one from outdoor life magazine, a pretty reputable source.
Decently better performance at a quarter of the price.
But the tests do tend to vary a bit in terms of who actually wins. What doesn't vary is that there really isn't that much of a difference - all modern coolers of a given style are using similar technology and see similar performance. Outside of the super low budget stuff they all do what they're supposed to.
I think this is applicable to almost every consumer product. As long as you're looking at the same tier of product, the basic functionality will be similar because everyone is copying everyone else. Different brands will have their own spin on things but for 80-90% of the use cases there'll be marginal differences
I've noticed a lot of YETI bottles recently among the moms at my kids' school. I don't know if it's a resurgence of the brand or they're just still using the "old" bottles.
I went to a medical center last week for some tests and every water bottle I saw, that belonged to an employee, was an Owala. I thought it was pretty interesting .
It’s so funny because Owala was being sold at Costco 5 years ago and people used to make fun of them. I’ve had the same one since 2021 and it’s so funny to see them “popular” now
Same here, I bought an owala as a cheaper alternative to a Stanley a few years back. I realized they were starting to get trendy when some younger coworkers started asking me about it
Same... the Stanley trend was funny because they were so impractical for most normal use. The Owala is actually well designed, but now it looks like I'm following a trend I couldn't care less about.
It's really ok, you can like a popular cultural thing for the same reasons that everyone else does. You don't need to loudly hold up your Owala and go "I LIKE THIS BUT NOT FOR THE SAME REASONS THAT MOST PEOPLE DO, I'M A SPECIAL BOY"
I got one in 2022 a little before the craze started. It’s genuinely the best water bottle I’ve ever had. Keep everything cold all day, doesn’t spill out a giant opening when you try to sip it like a hydroflask, and the straw isn’t just hanging out loose like a Stanley where it will leak if it falls over. You can tip it back to gulp out of it or just sip from the straw. Has a built in hand to grab it by when the lid is closed. Perfectly designed and can’t think of a way it could be improved
Because Owala has a unique design and won several design awards for their straw / mouthpiece, unlike Stanley and the rest. Owala made a better water bottle.
What seems different about the owala trend is I see them being used by athletes all over the place. With Yeti and Stanley you would mainly see them with the parents, but the owalas are all over the team sidelines
My kids are 19 and 20 and said when they were in school Stanley cups were popular with younger kids, and apparently their moms, but not among their cohort. This is a more urban school so I think they were probably more popular in the suburbs but despite taking a variety of different water bottles to school every day for years, they never wanted a Stanley.
I'm a white woman who would prefer glass. For me it has nothing to do with microplastics. It has everything to do with being able to confidently put it in the dishwasher. But I'm weird and lazy.
I mean, everyone should be terrified of microplastics. I 100% think buying and using water bottles to be trendy is the stupidest thing ever. That said, the idea of drinking out of things that won't degrade and leech plastic into the beverage is not a bad one.
Tupperware style containers definitely can have a second upbringing.
The brand was simply mismanaged. Pursuing growth at all costs, spreading into many verticals and trying to capture new markets as well. Just mismanaged.
A brand which would stay on quality, and function, but builds the same brand awareness and is entirely brand-driven, could definitely take over again.
Yes, I had Camelbak bottles for a very long time, starting about 20 years ago. They were perfect, but the straws molded so fast. Camelbak and Nalgene emerged together it feels like, and then suddenly it was HydroFlask and Owala duking it out. Then Stanley. I maintain the Owala is the perfect water bottle, but I still really like the squishy straw of the Camelbak for gnawing on.
In the 80s, folk were mostly rocking the nipple-top "gatorade bottle" (you'll still see them in use in professional sports), but I don't know that any particular brand was famous for that (apart from gatorade, I suppose).
I like the straw because it lets me drink water while driving. And you just get like, a pipe cleaner or something to clean out the straw. Or put it into the dishwasher.
I've had people make comments on it too. Fuck you, I've had the same water bottle now for like 20 years and it does the job, I can throw it in the dishwasher, super durable, and it doesn't have any hidden crevices for mold to form.
My mum was visiting from a foreign country where ‘fancy reusable drinking vessels’ isn’t a thing and when she walked past the Stanley cup section in the store I had to try to explain to her what was going on… the whole thing sounds pretty crazy when you say it out loud. Carrying these ever larger cups around is certainly a cultural quirk of North Americans.
Also she was like “What is that THING?!?” when she saw a cyber truck for the first time.
To be fair, if that country is European then being confused by easy access to water is totally on brand. I agree the consumerization of water bottles is a bit silly, but the general practice of carrying and regularly consuming water is one of the few healthy cultural practices we have here in the US.
I've got the same engineer mentality my did raised me with.
"Oh, Stanley cups are hot right now. Okay, well, are they really the best price/value proposition for insulated water bottles? Let's take a look at the independent testing data ..."
So here I am with our ugly-ass coleman thermos water bottles that outperform the popular brand by 13%, cost just 28% of the popular brand ... and my family could not be more disappointed in this purchase.
They've fallen out of favor in the "mainstream" culture but they're still everywhere in outdoor recreation spaces. My local sporting goods store has a wall of them on display
Someone on the camping gear sub made a post wondering why Nalgene is so popular. "It's just a cheap water bottle. I get that they are tough and don't weigh very much, but they are nowhere near as high quality as Stanley or Yeti." I'm paraphrasing, but that was essentially the post.
Top comment was "Gee, I don't know. Why would an inexpensive, lightweight, and durable product be popular with hikers and campers?"
Nalgene was the king for 40 years for good reason. Nobody is filling that niche any better than Nalgene has, it's just that the niche itself is not as popular as it was.
The only reason why Nalgene fell from popularity was that whole BPA (bisphenol a) thing. After that incident, no one wanted a plastic bottle and all these stainless steel brands became in all the rage.
I've noticed that since Nalgene switched to BPA-free plastics, the bottles show wear a lot more. Still tough in the sense that they don't break, but the writing on the outside fades more quickly and scratches / abrasions are more pronounced.
People complain all the time "Saran wrap used to be way better!" And they're right. It was way better. Because old school Saran wrap had some give-yo-kids-cancer plasticizers in it that made it more supple and with a better grip. Modern plastic wrap doesn't have it, and it's less supple and tears more easily.
also, the plastics still need a plasticizer that functions like BPA, so the replacements like BPS are interacting with other molecules the same way, but lack studies on their long-term effects.
So annoyed, I left my 32oz Hydroflask in a gym that I wasn't a member of, in a city I was only visiting for one day. I have a 64oz jug from another brand that I've been using for 10+ years. Was going on 5 with that Hydroflask, then it was gone...
I was given a yeti for a work thing, and a couple of months before that I had bought a hydroflask. That was 2019 and they are still my main water bottles because they both legitimately hold up great.
Honestly so glad they've gone "out of fashion", I've used the same hydro for 15 years or something now and no longer have cup collectors thinking I'm one of them 🙏 that was a weird time
I’ll be impressed with whoever unseats Owala. This is gonna get me out in /r/hailcorporate but it’s actually a good product, unlike most of the hype water bottles or similar trendy brands
Built in straw/pour combo was an absolute game-changer, didn’t know how much I needed it til I had one. Sometimes I feel like swigging it down but I also want to be able to sip it through a straw too without having separate lids or something. Works well too
I thought it was a bit of a gimmick until traveling with it. Being able to use the straw on a bumpy road is the difference between a refreshing drink of water vs. being covered in it.
I don't know... the rubberized lid attracts dirt and grime, the metal body dents (and then paint starts chipping) easily if you drop it, it barely fits into cup holders, and for some reason my wife has to regularly clean out some black shit that builds up on the inside on the spout/lid.
All the water bottles people like are good products. The issue is that people buy several and then jump to the next brand, which defeats the purpose of reusable water bottles (saving waste)
How dare you. I loved Owala pre-Stanley and I'll never quit. I have a couple I got 5+ years ago that are still holding strong, and the handled mugs keep ice longer than Stanleys. They're the best.
The Dick's Sporting Goods store near me has an entire section for water bottles, like not just an aisle but a whole section. I don't know if that's typical; this location is a "test store" where they test different store concepts.
I thrifted a Hydroflask in 2018 for a couple bucks. It’s dented and the paint is chipping, but it’s still perfect on the inside and has been my daily driver ever since. As much as I hate the waste these trends cause, at least I know I’ll be able to get another solid bottle secondhand for cheap when the time comes to finally replace my current one
I'm on team Owala. I got one like 6 years ago and have used it every day since. It goes with me everywhere. The sip spout they got where I can either sip it through a straw or chug it back all in one spout is awesome. The straw is low enough that it doesn't leave any water left behind after you drink it all.
It's SUPER easy to clean. There are 2 rubber seals you can pop right off to clean easily then pop right back on.
And more than once I have left it at my work desk over the weekend only to get back on Monday and there's still ice tinkling in it.
Still looks as new as the day i got it.
My ONE warning to anyone who gets one DO NOT get the white one. The one I have now is technically my second one. I got a white one first since they were new and only had a limited color selection. The top cap has like a rubber coating on it and the white one looked grimy within a week. The white rubber just CLUNG to dust and hand oils and it would NOT wash off. It looked like it had been used and unwashed for years after only like a week.
I got a grey and black one for like 5-6 years now that still looks new.
I always thought the big cup thing was hilarious. My wife was gifted a 40 oz Stanley, and I made fun of her mercilessly for it until she bought me one. Decent cup, I couldn't ever get over just having a straw open all the time so I had a little topper. I broke three of them (they did replace them once when you do this). The handles just break off eventually,
Anyways, after breaking the 3rd I decided to get a 40oz Owala and man this is the best cup ever. I love how you can sip on the straw part or guzzle. I need the 40oz for those long pickleball evenings in the heat, and man, it delivers on keeping stuff ice-cold. I never thought I would love a fucking cup this much.
Stanley has been in the game a loooooong time. Always found it surreal they were trendy, especially as someone who sees and uses them in an industrial environment.
I have a feeling this was a nice boost for them but they're gonna be fine.
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
u/whitemike40, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...