Here's How Capri-Sun Made a Lilo & Stitch Cameo

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for Lilo & Stitch.]

It’s always (Capri) sunny in Hawaii.

Need proof? Look no further than Disney’s box office behemoth, Lilo & Stitch, which banked a Memorial Day record with a $341 million worldwide gross. Capri-Sun features prominently in the live-action remake of the Mouse House’s 2002 animated favorite, serving as the fruit-flavored beverage of choice for the central human characters—six-year-old Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her older sister and guardian, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

The first Capri-Sun cameo occurs early in the movie when Nani invites social worker Mrs. Kekoa (played by Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the cartoon) into the ramshackle house she shares with her sister since their parents’ deaths. After offering her visitor a cup of tea, the teen discovers that the cupboards are bare except for a lone pouch of Capri-Sun.

Necessity being the mother of invention, Nani pours the shelf-stable juice drink into a teacup and adds some heat via the microwave. Her guest’s verdict isn’t a resounding endorsement, sadly. “It’s… sweet,” Carrere says with a mild grimace. On her way out the door, Mrs. Kekoa correctly guesses the cup’s contents, and Nani offers a semi-embarrassed shrug.

Later on, Lilo gets her own moment in the Capri-Sun while attempting to keep her alien pal Stitch out of the hands of his maker, Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis). After pulling a Kevin McAllister and devising a clever way to knock the extraterrestrial scientist off his feet, she raises a pouch and takes a triumphant sip through its signature yellow straw.

According to Disney marketing evp Martha Morrison, that in-movie promotion came about thanks to the studio’s product placement and partnership teams.

“Most of our integrations are done in a way that are meant to be natural or narrative,” she tells ADWEEK. “In the Nani scene, they were looking for a beverage that was obviously not tea, so that’s the narrative hook.”

Tasked with finding a non-tea beverage, the teams ultimately decided that Capri-Sun would be the right drink at the right time: “They thought that would be a great brand,” Morrison says.

It’s worth noting that you won’t see Lilo and Stitch’s faces on Capri-Sun pouches in supermarkets anytime soon. That’s because the product only came aboard as an in-movie integration, not a promotional partner. But the film does have a long list of the latter, led by Spam, which has deep roots with Hawaiian consumers.

“Both the Spam brand and The Walt Disney Studios have created timeless connections with families across generations, making this collaboration a natural fit,” Spam’s senior brand manager, Daniel Kubiak, told The Hollywood Reporter about the partnership.

“Spam feels very specific to Hawaii,” confirms Morrison, noting that several other Hawaiian or Hawaii-inspired brands are onboard as promotional partners. For example, Hawaiian Airlines wrapped three of its planes with Lilo & Stitch imagery, while Tropical Smoothie Cafe created its own ‘Ohana Breeze beverage.

As the first 21st-century Disney cartoon to be turned into a live-action feature, Lilo & Stitch has a built-in cross-generational appeal that extends backwards to millennials and forwards to Gen-Z and Gen-A. Not for nothing, but that’s the same age range of consumers raised on Capri-Sun, which is another reason why that drink proved to be the right in-movie co-star.

“The nostalgia window on Lilo & Stitch is a good one,” Morrison agrees. “You get kids who think Stitch is a really fun character, and people in their 20s and 30s who watched the original movie as kids. It opens up the audience in a good way.”

That’s the same kind of nostalgia button that Morrison hopes to hit with a partnership that’s part of Disney’s big summer animated movie, Elio. The Pixar-made feature has a tie-in with Ellio’s Pizza, the frozen pizza brand familiar to multiple generations of hungry latchkey kids.

“That’s been a real throwback for a certain audience of people who work here,” Morrison says with a smile. And frozen pizza certainly pairs well with a cold Capri-Sun.