‘Lilo & Stitch': How a Fuzzy Blue Alien Became a Disney Cash Cow

New York Times

21-05-2025

Eight-year-old Elle Bauerlein of Wake Forest, N.C., is obsessed with Stitch. 'Honestly, I think about him all the time. Like, 10 hours every day.'
Her American Girl doll, currently clad in a Stitch onesie complete with alien-eared hood, is technically named Stacy, but Elle prefers to call her 'S' in tribute to Stitch. If she had to pick a favorite Disney princess it would be Moana, but only because Moana spends time on beachy activities similar to Stitch. Her pillowcase is Stitch. Her backpack is Stitch. Her Crocs are Stitch.
The third grader was born more than a decade after the 2002 Disney animated film 'Lilo & Stitch' was released in theaters, and yet, for the past two years, the rambunctious title character has been a fixture in her life.
She's not alone.
In an act of belated cultural permeation, Stitch — the destructive but adorable alien experiment who crash-landed in Hawaii and befriended a young girl named Lilo — has become a crucial character in the Walt Disney Company's modern empire, mainly in the form of a dizzying array of licensed merchandise.
At PetSmart, you can find a Stitch squeaker toy for your dog. The discount chain Five Below has Stitch neck pillows, portable power banks and slime. Stitch clothing and accessories line the shelves at Primark. Yoplait offers berry- and cherry-flavored Stitch yogurt. Even Graceland has a tie-in collection of Stitch pompadoured plushies dressed in various Elvis Presley ensembles. If you're overwhelmed, don't worry: There's also a cottage industry of TikTokers who devote their entire accounts to showcasing the latest Stitch-centric items to their legions of followers.
While Disney does not release official sales data, the company's annual financial reports for 2023 and 2024 included 'Lilo & Stitch' on a short list of nine examples of its 'major' licensed properties, putting it on par with classic titans like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey and Friends, and conglomerates like Star Wars and the collective Disney princesses.
All of this predates the May 23 arrival of Disney's live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' remake, which is on track for a $120 million opening and, with a fresh round of products, set to supercharge Stitch mania for the now C.G.I.-ed star.
'He is one of those special characters who is simply fun to bring to life through products,' Tasia Filippatos, the president of Disney Consumer Products, said in an emailed statement that also noted how Stitch's 'playfulness' and 'mischievous personality translates easily into a broad range' of items around the globe.
The mass proliferation of Stitch merchandise wasn't an obvious evolution. Although the animated film earned more than $273 million (or $484 million when adjusted for inflation) at the global box office, it failed to generate the blockbuster numbers and cultural cachet of Disney predecessors like 'The Lion King' and 'Beauty and the Beast,' or the more recent billion-dollar hits 'Frozen' and 'Zootopia.' Until this year, the onscreen 'Stitch' franchise had been mostly dormant since a string of direct-to-video and TV releases in the 2000s.
Yet, the Stitch character has only grown in popularity with wide swaths of consumers. He is nationless, raceless and ageless. And while he's canonically male, a Google search for 'Stitch' suggests a popular question is 'Is Stitch a boy or a girl?' The Disney Stitch Puppetronic, an 18-inch electronic puppet by Wow! Stuff that was named the 2025 Toy of the Year, echoes this idea in its official description, noting, 'Stitch transcends age and gender.'
'You could have asked me three years ago, 'Who's going to be the customer for this?'' Richard North, the Wow! Stuff chief executive, said in an interview. 'I would have said it was really clear: 7 to 12 year olds. How wrong.'
Instead, North said, consumers 13 and older, including Gen Z enthusiasts and middle-aged collectors, are responsible for at least 40 percent of all Stitch Puppetronic sales. With younger customers, he said, the gender breakdown is evenly split, while older fans tend to skew more female.
'It's been the biggest, broadest, all-encompassing demographic for a toy, I think, that we've ever created,' North said.
Chris Sanders, one of the directors of the animated 'Lilo & Stitch,' first doodled his idea for an orphaned monster in the 1980s while toying with an idea for a children's book. He resurrected the concept in the mid-1990s when Disney approached him for feature film ideas, transforming his initial drawing of a creature that resembled a tiger with a fang-toothed rodent head into the stocky star we know today.
'I just took some time and drew a character that I really wanted to see,' said Sanders, who also voices Stitch. 'There was never a discussion about his design.'
During the animated film's production, the biggest change to Stitch's physique was switching his color from the original reptilian green to a cool blue — a suggestion that Sanders recalled was made by the head of the paint and ink department who thought that blue would make it more believable that certain characters mistake Stitch for a dog. (Bluey would agree.)
However, popular assumptions that Stitch's physical traits are based on those of a French bulldog or a koala are incorrect. 'Those are legitimate comparisons,' Sanders said. 'But the thing I was thinking was a bat.'
Now, like Mickey Mouse, Stitch is an instantly recognizable brand ambassador. Unlike Mickey, Stitch is a misfit and a menace.
'If a bunch of Disney characters like Mickey, Donald and Goofy had a Christmas party, they wouldn't invite Stitch. But if a bunch of villains had a party, they wouldn't invite him either,' Sanders said. 'When I was thinking about that, I realized Stitch exists in this zone between good and evil. He exists in the zone that we exist in.'
Because of that unique status, Stitch can misbehave in ways few other Disney characters are permitted and still connect with consumers. In 2004, he toilet-papered Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom in Florida and graffitied 'Stitch is king' on it to celebrate the opening of the now-defunct Stitch's Great Escape ride. More recently, a Los Angeles billboard for Marvel's 'Thunderbolts*' was updated to feature the new C.G.I. Stitch bursting through the image, blocking the other stars' faces. There's also a poster for the live-action film that shows him chewing on the Pixar ball and wearing bite-riddled Mickey ears while stomping on a lightsaber.
'Disney characters, for the most part, are all about being proper or about being royal,' said Travis Hammock, a.k.a. Ohana Trav, a 30-year-old content creator who highlights Stitch products on TikTok and Instagram. 'They have to fit into this mold. They have to live up to their parents' standards. But Stitch is just a rebel from birth.'
Hammock converted a spare bedroom in his Winter Park, Fla., home to hold 'probably more than 1,000' pieces of Stitch merchandise he said he had acquired, either through his own purchases or collaborations with Stitch licensees like Funko and Hot Topic.
He first noticed Disney prioritizing Stitch merch in 2021, when it rolled out a 'Stitch Crashes Disney' limited-edition collection that reimagined the character in the colors and imagery of other classic Disney movies, like 'Peter Pan' and 'Pinocchio' — a rare instance of the company's franchises intermingling on products. That was followed by a sprawling summer-themed Stitch collection in 2023, and another collection, in 2024, that featured Stitch eating various theme-park snacks.
'They're not only making more merch, but they're doing annual or routine launches,' Hammock said. 'Mickey and Minnie and the O.G. characters, they're not even getting some of that attention. There are so many people that love Stitch, and it's so unique that clearly it's selling.'
Noticeably lacking in the mountains of merch? Lilo. The 6-year-old protagonist of the franchise, and other human characters like her older sister, Nani, and Nani's love interest, David, are rarely featured. A more prominently merchandised character is Angel, a female experiment introduced in the 2000s 'Lilo & Stitch' TV series who looks similar to Stitch but pink.
Josi Cruz, who runs the @mainstreetorlando TikTok, where she often highlights new Disney merchandise, said she believes children see themselves in the Lilo role, and tote their Stitch toys as if he were their pet.
'Lilo is very lonely. Girls bully her because she's 'weird.' But Stitch is always by her side,' Cruz said. 'So I feel like kids can identify with being Lilo themselves, and they just want to have Stitch in their lives.'
Still, consumers can be fickle. In at least one North Carolina classroom, Stitch's days of reigning supreme are already dwindling.
'Last year, Stitch was the most popular with the other kids at school, that's for sure,' said Elle, the 8-year-old fan. 'But this year, everybody likes Hello Kitty.'