Probably not, although the plush flying monkeys probably are. Those cups do look like they’d more attractive to kids than most of the other merch available.
I keep looking but I still can’t find any controversy over this than the one Daily Dot article you cited quoting a bunch of guys on Reddit. For some reason they didn’t cite cumslutorlando90. All over the internet.
I’ve known of “gooning” as a masturbation term for at least a year now[1], probably from hanging out on Reddit and Discord. Since then, I’ve seen it used in various YouTube videos and other such media. Though it used to have a more specific meaning in that context, it’s shifted to just general “jackin’ it a lot” most of the time. Will it still be in common parlance in another five years? No clue but it’s a common term among the younger set now and the looser definition means it gets used more commonly.
Google Trends suggests it started really taking off in early 2024 ↩︎