Life

'Star Wars' Coffee Cups Are A Sleepy Nerd's Dream

by Lara Rutherford-Morrison

Looking for a very dark roast for your morning brew? These Star Wars- themed coffee cups will you give your usual caffeine routine an extra jolt from the Dark Side. Featuring stormtrooper and Darth Vader lids along side other “Dark Side” coffee accessories, this slick, so-perfect-you’ll-be-wondering-why-you-didn’t-think-of-it-before product design will have you asking a very important question: “If Darth Vader had tried to tempt Luke Skywalker over to the Dark Side with delicious coffee, instead of power and conquest and all that, would Return of the Jedi have turned out very differently?” (My answer is yes, definitely. Luke would have succumbed to the Dark Side, the Empire would have won, and there would have been coffee for all).

Created by Spencer Davis and Scott Schenone, these coffee designs are part of the Dark Brew Coffee House, a Star Wars/coffee house mashup that imagines what life would be like if the Empire operated a coffee truck. The concept includes black and white cups, specialized coffee blends (including “Sith,” “Death Star,” and “Coruscant” varieties), and a “Star Destroyer” coffee truck, but the best parts have to be the Darth Vader and stormtrooper coffee lids, which somehow manage to both evoke the distinct aesthetic of Star Wars and still look just like the plastic lids you get on your coffee run every morning.

Davis and Schenone explained to Bustle that they were inspired to design Dark Brew after seeing a video featuring the “world’s largest coffee lid collection” and realizing that there are hundreds of different coffee lids out there that all basically do the same thing — there’s no “standard” lid. Schenone, an industrial designer, said, “There’s no ideal coffee lid. So we’re thinking, hey—why not make something fun and different? And Star Wars was coming out, and we’re both huge fans, so we figured, you know, let’s make an homage to that.”

Coffee and Star Wars may seem to exist in different universes, but Davis and Schenone’s design suggests that there may be more overlap than you might think. Schenone told Bustle, “There’s something really manufactured and almost machine processed about coffee lids. In the Star Wars movies, stormtroopers are sort of the same kind of system. It’s all sort of mass manufactured.”

Davis and Schenone don’t currently have plans to take “Dark Brew” beyond the conceptual stage (That sobbing you hear in the background is me). Davis, a visual interaction designer, told Bustle of the concept's potential future, “We just like to make things to share with the world. We don’t know what’s going to happen.” The designers have been happy with the enthusiastic response they’ve received from fans. Schenone said, “It’s just awesome to have people see our work.”

Images courtesy of Spencer Davis and Scott Schenone.