Water bottles have been trending rapidly over the past couple of years. With big corporations shoving endless amounts of trends in our faces, water bottles seem to be an interesting one. From Nalgene being the dominant water bottle for decades, to nipple top bottles in the 90’s and 2000’s. Contigo, Camelbak, and Swell all in the 2000’s-2010’s. The iconic VSCO trend of 2019 with Hydroflasks, and the current trends of Stanley Cups and Owalas. All these bottles might seem overwhelming, but everyone has preferences and choices within their bottles. In this article, you’ll see some of the top water bottles people are using right now.
Stanley Cup
The most notable water bottle as of right now, the Stanley Cup has seen an interesting claim to fame from the past couple years. Stanley started in 1913 by a man named William Stanely Jr. The company itself prides itself on being a brand with a rich 100+ years of history, and the fact the bottles are fused with vacuum insulation and the strength of steel. The Stanley site claims to keep drinks cold for 11 hours and keep ice for 2 days, and hot drinks for 7 hours. The most popular ones seen around school and the internet, is “The Quencher H2.0 Flowstate Tumbler”. For a 30 oz bottle the cost is around $35, and the price keeps climbing for bigger bottle sizes.
Stanley was first marketed towards the male construction worker to have a large water bottle to hold enough water for the long work hours. But how could a water bottle from a 100 year old brand marketed to male construction workers possibly catch the eyes of thousands of teens and middle aged moms? This shift might be rooted in an Instagram and Blog known as “Buy Guide”, a product recommendation site whose audience is typically female Mormoms. One of Buy Guide’s first recommendations was the Stanley cup, and by promoting it to their followers, they got Stanley to really be out there. At first after initially promoting the tumbler, Stanley suddenly stopped selling it out of nowhere. So the Buy Guide crew banded together to try and sell it out and prove to Stanley this is a one of a kind product. And they did. After Stanley finally saw the potential in their tumbler, they started a shift in their marketing in 2020. Then after people seeing and engaging with Stanley content online, business boomed. Now, typically at schools and workplaces, you’ll see people walking around with a big Stanley in their hands, but the opinions on Stanleys are varied depending on person to person. On a survey sent out to the whole school, 46.7% of people that responded to the survey said they had a strong opinion on Stanleys. For example, junior Masah Kazkaz expresses her opinion on Stanleys: I feel like they’re gigantic. They have huge handles and they’re so bulky, and it’s hard to carry them around. And I bet you 95% of those people don’t drink all that water”. Masah does not have a Stanley, but prefers her Gatorade bottle instead. On the other hand, Delaney Michaels, who has a Stanley, has a different perspective. When asked about why she had a Stanley she said, “They’re pretty and I like the colors of it.” However, when she was asked if she would recommend a Stanley to someone else she responds with “Not the one I have because it leaks all over, but the one that has a closed and opened lid”. Even though Stanley’s are very popular, people have lots of strong opinions on them. It all just depends on personal needs and likings.
HydroFlask
HydroFlasks have been a staple water bottle in the past couple of years. Started by a couple in Oregon in 2009, the pair started selling their water bottles in farmers markets. Travis Robach had the idea for it because he didn’t like that his water would get cold and told his girlfriend at the time, Cindy Weber. In 2012, their relationship fell apart and Scott Allam, a longtime executive, started guiding the Hydro Flask company, which then led to bottles being sold in Europe. In 2016, Helen of Troy acquired the company for $210 million and propelled the bottle to dominance, which eventually led to the VSCO trend of 2019. The VSCO trend derived from the app VSCO where you can post pictures, which the main audience wereis teenage girls. It started off as a joke to make fun of these ‘VSCO girls’ but then people just started claiming themselves as VSCO girls. Hydroflasks fit in the mold of a VSCO girl, a teenage girl who likes taking pictures, summer, and being environmentally conscious. This got loads of people buying HydroFlasks and talking about them. The most popular model sold by Hydroflask is ‘Wide Mouths’, a bottle with a bigger lid. These normally go for $44.95 and above depending on the size, and ‘Standard Mouths’ which start at $39.95. Interestingly, Hydroflasks are also vacuum insulated. They also sell thumblers which typically start from the 30’s. Besides water bottles, they sell kitchenware, camping gear, accessories for your water bottle, and you can buy a replacement lid and straws. Hydroflasks in general get good reviews. Freshman Alyssa Astrella remarks that “I like Hydroflasks especially for sports they’re nice and keep your stuff cold”. Most people have Hydro Flasks because it’s a trusted brand for many years and they’ve been consistently solid in the sea of many water bottles.
Owala
The Owala water bottle brand is a part of the Trove Brands collection and was created in 2020 by Steve Sorenson. Trove Brands is known for putting together water bottle brands whose goals are to produce water bottles that are convenient for daily life. Owala water bottles peaked in popularity through social media because of its great design and eco-conscious manufacturing as well as its cute design that makes you look like a koala when drinking from it. With many different designs ranging from 40oz Tumblers that can fit in the usual cup holder to their 10oz SmoothSip bottles to keep your coffee warm, the FreeSip model is the most popular. With 15 different colors and 4 different sizes, the FreeSip water bottle was selected for “The Best Inventions of 2023” by TIME in the Fitness category. Owala also includes special features in their designs that most water bottles don’t have. Freshmen Charly Labate and Emma Koziol share their reasons for purchasing their Owala water bottles saying, “I chose it because of the colors and the function of how you can sip it and drink through the straw.” In addition to this, freshman Caroline Nash emphasizes the luxury of her 32oz Owala water bottle: “They don’t spill or leak, they are a convenient size, and they have both a straw and a pour option. They keep my water cold and it’s easy to carry around because of the handle.” On top of that, Owala uses stainless steel and uses triple layer insulation in their water bottles and considers the safety of their buyers by making sure their products are BPA, lead, and phthalate-free.
Cirkul
In 2015, founders Andy Gay and Garrett Waggoner created Cirkul with the intention of making drinking water easier. The story behind this starts way back when they were on the football team at Dartmouth College when Waggoner was trying to pour a drink powder inside a narrow mouth of a water bottle and created a huge mess, spilling the powder everywhere. As athletes, this sparked Gay and Waggoner’s idea of creating a water bottle where you can easily add flavor to your water bottle. Cirkul water bottles have a compartment in the lid where you can add different types of powders to your drink. “I chose the water bottle because I like the flavors they have. Almost all water bottles use water only but for Cirkul you can drink around 32 flavors,” says freshman Javi Terrell. Cirkul offers over 100+ flavors giving different types of boosts to your water. Ranging from electrolyte body fuel, boosting caffeine, and calming tea, you can add powder packets into the lid compartment and twist the dial to add a more flavorful taste. Along with that, they don’t contain sugar and are all-natural flavors with no dyes.
