Stanley — the 112-year-old drinkware brand that became a cultural phenomenon through viral social media adoption — is bringing Argentine yerba mate tradition to its global consumer base through a collaboration with Lionel Messi. The 'Striker Blue' collection, officially announced via PR Newswire in 2025, introduces dedicated mate drinkware designed in consultation with the Argentine soccer icon and scheduled to drop on July 22, 2025.
The Product Line
The Striker Blue collection comprises three products purpose-built for the mate ritual: the Messi x Stanley 1913 Classic Mate Mug, a double-wall vacuum-insulated vessel designed to maintain water temperature during the extended mate-drinking session; the Messi x Stanley 1913 High Precision Flow Mate System, which integrates a mate cup with a pour-over water reservoir that controls flow rate and temperature; and a Yerba Mate Bombilla Straw, a stainless steel filtered straw that ships with the system. The colorway — light blue and gold — is a direct reference to the Argentine national team jersey.
Following the GOAT Pink Sellout
The Striker Blue drop is the second release in the Messi x Stanley 1913 partnership. The initial 'GOAT Pink' collection — featuring a rose-gold color scheme with the same mate-focused product architecture — launched in December 2024 and sold out rapidly, generating significant demand on secondary markets. The commercial success of the first drop validated Stanley's hypothesis that a celebrity partnership could introduce mate culture to consumers who had never encountered a gourd and bombilla, by repackaging the ritual in the brand's familiar stainless-steel-and-vacuum-insulation language.
Cultural Transmission via Consumer Product
The Messi collaboration is notable not merely as a celebrity endorsement but as a case study in cultural transmission through consumer products. Messi's personal mate habit is well documented: he has been photographed with a gourd and thermos at training sessions, airports, and press conferences throughout his career. By translating this personal habit into a product line from one of America's most recognizable drinkware brands, the partnership exposes millions of consumers to the mate-drinking ritual in a format that requires no prior cultural knowledge — no wooden gourd to cure, no bombilla to select, no water temperature to learn. Whether this simplification honors or dilutes the tradition is a question that the mate-drinking world has not yet resolved.
For the broader yerba mate category, the Stanley collaboration represents a demand-creation event of unusual scale. Stanley's annual revenue exceeds US$750 million, and its social media reach — powered by a community of collectors and influencers who document limited-edition drops — provides exposure that the yerba mate industry has never previously accessed. If even a fraction of Stanley's customer base purchases yerba to use with their Messi Mate Mug, the downstream effect on leaf demand could be measurable.