How a fuzzy blue alien from Lilo & Stitch became a Disney cash cow

NEW YORK – Eight-year-old Elle Bauerlein of Wake Forest, North Carolina, is obsessed with Stitch. “Honestly, I think about him all the time. Like, 10 hours every day.”

Her American Girl doll – clad in a Stitch onesie, complete with alien-eared hood – is technically named Stacy, but Elle prefers to call it “S” in tribute to Stitch.

If she had to pick a favourite 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 theatres. And yet, for the past two years, the rambunctious title character has been a fixture in her life.

She is not alone.

In an act of belated cultural permeation, Stitch – the destructive but adorable alien experiment that crash-landed in Hawaii and befriended a young girl named Lilo – has become a crucial character in The Walt Disney Co’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-flavoured Stitch yogurt. Even Graceland has a tie-in collection of Stitch pompadoured plushies dressed in various Elvis Presley ensembles.

If you are overwhelmed, do not worry. There is 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 a par with classic titans such as Winnie The Pooh and Mickey And Friends, and conglomerates like Star Wars and the collective Disney princesses.

With Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch remake earning US$341.7 million (S$438 million) at the global box office since opening on May 22, a fresh round of products is set to supercharge Stitch mania for the now computer-generated star.

Stitch “is one of those special characters who is simply fun to bring to life through products”, Ms Tasia Filippatos, president of Disney Consumer Products, said in an e-mailed 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 was not an obvious evolution.

Although the original animated film earned more than US$273 million at the global box office, it failed to generate the blockbuster numbers and cultural cachet of Disney predecessors like The Lion King (1994) and Beauty And The Beast (1991), or the more recent billion-dollar hits Frozen (2013 to present) and Zootopia (2016 to present).

Until 2025, the on-screen 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 swathes of consumers. He is nationless, raceless and ageless. And while he is canonically male, a Google search for “Stitch” suggests a popular question is: “Is Stitch a boy or a girl?”

The Disney Stitch Puppetronic, an almost 46cm 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?’” said Wow! Stuff chief executive Richard North in an interview.

“I would have said it was really clear: seven- to 12-year-olds. How wrong.”

Instead, he added, consumers aged 13 and older, including Gen Z enthusiasts and middle-aged collectors, are responsible for at least 40 per cent 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,” he said.

Chris Sanders, one of the directors and writers 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 people 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 the character’s design, he adds.

Now, like Mickey Mouse, Stitch is an instantly recognisable brand ambassador. But, 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 realised Stitch exists in this zone between good and evil. He exists in the zone that we exist in.”

“Disney characters, for the most part, are all about being proper or royal,” said Mr Travis Hammock, also known as Ohana Trav, a 30-year-old content creator who highlights Stitch products on TikTok and Instagram. “They have to fit into this mould. 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, Florida, 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 prioritising Stitch merchandise in 2021, when it rolled out a “Stitch Crashes Disney” limited-edition collection that reimagined the character in the colours and imagery of other classic Disney movies, like Peter Pan (1953) and Pinocchio (1940). It was 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 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 OG characters, they’re not even getting some of that attention. There are so many people that love Stitch, and it’s so unique that it’s clearly selling.”

Noticeably lacking in the mountains of merch? Lilo. The six-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 is pink.

TikTok user Josi Cruz, who runs the @mainstreetorlando account, where she often highlights new Disney merchandise, said she believes children see themselves in the Lilo role, and tote their Stitch toys as if these were their pet.

“Lilo is very lonely. Girls bully her because she’s ‘weird’. But Stitch is always by her side,” she 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 eight-year-old fan. “But this year, everybody likes Hello Kitty.” NYTIMES