Lilo & Stitch (2025): What Its Success Says About Toy & Entertainment Evolution Since 2002

Lilo & Stitch (2025): What Its Success Says About Toy & Entertainment Evolution Since 2002

Do you need help to find the right mid to senior level people? We can help…we have been helping people from across the world of Toys, Games & Licensing to find new roles since 2011. Our client list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ in the industry, think of a Toy company and we have worked with them in some way. Along the way we have met thousands of really talented people who could be your next hire.  Send me a DM for more information if you need help to hire new people, or check out www.ToyRecruitment.com 

Lilo & Stitch (2025) has hit over $1billion in global box office takings at the time of writing. This is a big number for the sequel to a movie which originally took $274 million back in 2002. So what’s changed? How has a movie franchise which did ok, but was not a big hit turned to gold in 2025 for The Walt Disney Company? There are a number of reasons for that, and in some ways the 2025 big success vs the 2002 movie doing ok is a symptom of broader changes in the world of family entertainment and Toys.

LILO & STITCH 2002

The hardest job I ever had in Toys was when I randomly found myself the junior member of a two-person team managing Hasbro’s relationship with Disney in Europe back in the early noughties. At that time, the companies had so much business together that our regular update meetings would last all day. In the midst of an eight-hour extended meeting as tiredness came on, we would let something slip and suddenly find ourselves in trouble when we went back to the office. I remember we agreed to giving up Plush rights in Hungary (or somewhere else in Eastern Europe, my memory is hazy on the details) to the original Lilo & Stitch movie and being advised we had just given away $2-3m when we got back to the office.

When Hasbro signed a big new deal with Disney back at the turn of the millennium, and I took on that new role helping to manage the relationship between Hasbro & Disney, there were 4 movies on the immediate horizon where Toy licensing was seen as opportunity: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lilo & Stitch, Monsters Inc. & Treasure Planet. Of the four, Monsters Inc had the biggest commercial expectations. And as it turned out rightly so as this movie hit $half a billion globally at the box office. Monsters Inc was a Pixar movie, and at that time, Pixar as a separate entity to Disney was notably and particularly successful with pretty much EVERY movie, so it was to be expected that movie had higher expectations. Atlantis: The Lost Empire had the lowest expectations; I would say that Treasure Planet was expected to be next most successful leaving the quirky but unusual format of Lilo & Stitch expected to be 3^rd out of 4^th in terms of commercial success.

Expectations are so important with the ‘quickly in and out’ business which movies offer. The movie will launch with strong marketing and noise causing an initial surge of merchandise sales, and then historically would come a Video or DVD launch later in the year for a 2^nd spike in Toy sales. The number of individual products developed depends largely on expectations of how a movie will do, but it’s always like placing a bet – some bets come off and some don’t. Think about how the original Toy Story movie Toy launch totally failed to set the bar high enough in terms of number of skus and inventory commitments. The same was clearly true with the original Frozen movie. Parents around the world were going crazy about how they couldn’t get hold of Toys for the movie…back in 2014 I remember being set up for an ambush interview on the radio to argue with angry parents why the Toy industry was trying to fleece them by keeping demand low and prices high (you can listen to that interview here if you want: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022bk27)

To cut to the chase here, Lilo & Stitch back in 2002, originally had fairly modest expectations versus the other Toyetic/family entertainment movies being released. To some degree then, the level of success achieved by the original movie was a self-fulfilling prophecy, in fact $1/4 billion was a very good number at that time for an animated movie.

BETWEEN 2002 AND 2025: A MEDIA REVOLUTION

When we look back at the media landscape as it was in 2002 versus how it is today, it is simply crazy how much it has changed. If those people who lived through the late 1700s and early 1800s experienced the industrial revolution, history will surely reflect on our current generations living through the ‘Internet Revolution’.

Movies were the dominant mass market Toy shifter back then, TV advertising was the primary marketing medium, physical retail prevailed over the nascent upstarts like Amazon, and Toy companies were Toy companies as opposed to being Toy companies with Entertainment company aspirations.

Fast forward to today, and home streaming of entertainment content prevails, TV advertising for Toys is considered a secondary marketing tactic now, online retail is huge, but in all fairness while everything else seems to have changed, movies are still a big thing if not quite as big a Toy sales driver as back in 2002…the bigger change though is the shift from the 2^nd sales bump model we used to have with VHS & DVD releases.

And it’s this latter point where we should begin with when it comes to understanding how Lilo & Stitch 2025 can do so much better than the original instalment. Because whereas historically, you would have to choose to buy the Video/DVD and would need to specifically choose to spend $10 (or whatever it costs) on a quirky lesser known older Disney movie, there are now 150m+ families around the world who could automatically stumble across and watch the original Lilo & Stitch movie without having to directly and specifically purchase that. It’s clear that Disney + has allowed the innately viral properties of the Stitch character to work viral magic.

One further thing that has changed since the original movie is labelling and narrative around gender & Toys. Unlike back in 2002, we no longer (publicly at least) label Toys as ‘Boys’ or ‘Girls’. One thing you have to note with Lilo & Stitch (both movies) is the positioning is fairly unusual – there is a super cutesy, quirky endearing young girl who also has a naughty side and who has all the usual friendship/family relationship issues we would expect in a property targeting Girls. On the other side, we have a miniature wrecking machine which is both capable of being ultra cute, ultra gross and is the embodiment of an action-oriented character which would traditionally be classified as ‘Boys’.

And therein lies an additional explanation of why it’s easier for Lilo & Stitch as a franchise to be successful in the Toy business today versus originally – back in 2002, the thinking of Toy companies was driven by which aisle in physical retail a Toy could be merchandised in. The physical retail reality of Toys R Us had a bigger part to play in the mindset and strategy of U.S. and US HQ’ d global Toy companies, a property could be skipped if it wasn’t clear where it could be merchandised – ‘if it ain’t on the Boys or Girls aisle, it ain’t nowhere’. Think back to Harry Potter’s first foray onto Toy shelves - when the first Mattel Toy lines launched back in the early noughties…despite the virtually unprecedented success of the books, and the first movies being very successful (nearly $2bn box office for the first 2 movie instalments alone), the Toy lines did not perform to expectations originally, largely because retail didn’t know where to merchandise it.

Today things have changed, but not just because of a changed perspective on gender across much of society, it’s also because departmentalisation/categorisation is less important with online retail. If you want Lilo Toys, Amazon will find them from your search, and the same applies for Stitch. Today, Harry Potter Toys & Games are among the most successful classic properties, arguably for the same reason – the gendering of Toy aisles is no longer an insurmountable hurdle.

NOSTALGIA: OLDER GENERATION INTRODUCING THEIR FAVOURITE TO A NEW GENERATION

Another factor to look at is that well known driver of movie franchise (and Licensed Toy) success: the rose-tinted view that comes from nostalgia. 23 years later after the original release, a child who was 7 first time around is now 30, maybe they have their own kids now. Maybe mom/dad and child can watch the 2025 iteration together, and we know how powerful that can be. Think Star Wars, think Jurassic Park/World etc., the list could go on and on. Nostalgia is a huge driver of Toy sales and with the increase in ‘Fandom’ which has been one of the major successes of the Toy business across the last decade or so, it’s obvious how this could be a big part of the greater success of Lilo & Stitch in 2025.

THE IMPACT OF LIVE ACTION

One final point which is a little off topic but needs to be said – live action real human characters can obviously create stronger emotions than animated characters. One very powerful factor in the 2025 iteration of Lilo & Stitch is the raw emotions created by the threat of Lilo being taken from her sister and put into state custody. Seeing real human emotion really triggers a strong bond with the characters in a way which doesn’t always come across when the movie premise is more fantastical (okay the Stitch element is inter-planetary, and you don’t get more fantastical than that, but the relationship between Lilo and her sister is as real as it gets).

TOY & GAME BUSINESS CONSULTANCY

In the nearly 15 years I have been Consulting for, we have advised 1000+ Toy & Game companies, set up distribution into most major markets and helped to accelerate our client’s growth across the world. For more information on how we can help, check out our services here: www.KidsBrandInsight.com/services 

GREAT PEOPLE ARE YOUR BIGGEST ADVANTAGE

Toy Recruitment Consultancy has become one our most in demand services. We have a social and own media platform (including this newsletter) which allows us to directly access c. 25k people in the world of Toys & Games from across the planet, aside from which after 25 years of grind, we know a lot of Toy & Game people across the world.

We’ve successfully recruited for roles in the UK, USA, Korea, HK, China and beyond. Our contact network is truly global… (ok we’d struggle to recruit for you in North Korea, but otherwise we’ve got you covered!).

So if you have key senior roles to fill or if you just can’t find someone qualified for a key role you need to fill, just drop me a DM and I’ll explain how we work/the costs involved or check out our Toy Recruitment website here: www.ToyRecruitment.com

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This article is copyright 2025 RG Marketing Ltd, all rights reserved. All contributors to this article contributed under a work for hire basis on behalf of RG Marketing Ltd. Please also note, this article was written and published in the United Kingdom.

8 Characteristics Of Toy Companies That Stand The Test Of Time

8 Characteristics Of Toy Companies That Stand The Test Of Time

This article is the script of a podcast episode from our PLAYING AT BUSINESS podcast. If you would rather listen to the podcast than read the text, then just click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ep-112-8-characteristics-of-toy-companies-that-stand/id1389778170?i=1000713244503

If we look at Toy companies that have been around a long time, we can make several observations. Firstly, there are a surprising number of companies in the Toy industry that have been in existence for a whole generation or more. Secondly, there are certain critical factors these companies have in common, and in fact, we can also usually observe that those companies that don't stand the test of time have failed to follow one or more critical principles which their more longstanding counterparts have adhered to.

Here we outline these key factors:

1. Longevity Of Key Management

A ship on a long journey will make more direct and successful progress to its destination if it has the same skipper charting the course. In other words, this is industry works on extended timescales. We sell primarily in 2 windows per year, with a bias towards one of those windows, and it takes multiple cycles to make significant progress. Therefore it takes years to get anywhere in this industry. Consistent management, ethos and approach is a key criterion for success.

Take a look at the 3 biggest Toy companies - Mattel, Hasbro & Lego - all began as family businesses, built up product by product over an extended period of time. for 3-5 year pay back.

2. Clear Positioning In The Market

As human beings we like to put things in boxes/affix easy labels to aid our own understanding. Having a clear positioning allows buyers, suppliers, partners to know what we stand for, what to bring us, what to expect us to bring to them etc. Clear positioning also allows us to assemble expert knowledge, strong carry forward product lines and easier re-listings with buyers who know we will be back to see them this time next year and thus have a vested interest in supporting their business should our product not sell through.

3. Commitment To Brand Building

Again, if we look at the big 3 Toy companies globally, we can see that Mattel report their own brands accounting for a huge c. 75% of total sales. Hasbro's corporate strategy throughout the 'noughties’ was core brand focus, and Lego is in effect both a company and a hugely powerful brand at the same time.

Brands deliver more long-term security than nearly anything else because known performers get re-listed by retail, own brands are higher margin due to not having to pay 3rd party licensor or distributor %ages and because brand extensions are a much easier/less risky way to launch new product lines. And of course brands have huge value within themselves, as intellectual property, and can drive additional revenue via licensing out brands to other companies in different product categories.

4. Retaining Key Staff Members While Being Open To New Ideas

Note there are two parts to this factor - retaining key staff over the long haul, while still maintaining an openness to fresh ideas and ways of doing things. The human capital which is needlessly and sometimes thoughtlessly lost by many Toy companies for petty reasons or for reasons of neglect is a huge asset that disappears down the swannee.

Speaking as someone who has made massive, glaring errors, I'm reminded of the Thomas J. Watson (founder of IBM) quote:

“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

The reality is those staff who have been in situ longest inevitably hold the most knowledge, and in this business, knowledge very often is money saved or money earned  i.e. reliable, cost effective factories, knowing which QA tests to do, how to deliver the shipment on time etc.

Now having said that, under performing staff don't remain in situ for that length of time in the most long-lasting companies.

Experience and tenure are also no excuses for being closed to new approaches/ways of doing things.

So the companies that get the right balance on this factor tend to be the one's with most longevity.

5. Excellent And Enduring Product Pipeline

This is a product and feature driven business, innovation is key - but note it doesn't necessarily need to be your company's innovation, there are hundreds of long established, successful companies bringing proven products to their market from other company's R&D investment.

6. Excellent And Enduring Customer Relationships and Effective Sales Team

Let's be frank, retailers are a hard-nosed bunch on the whole, and rightly so, retail is a cut throat business. The strong and very demanding are more likely to survive in their game.

So in reality strong relationships depend on the performance of the products you ship into them as much as any other factor, but customer service and maintaining maximal supply at key times are also important. Inter personal relationships can play a critical role though, with some buyers more than others of course, but nevertheless it's a given that bad relationships with customers won't deliver success in the short term, never mind the long term!

7. Reliable Supply Chain

We've all nickel and dimed our way to shaving a few cents off our manufacturing spend. And who wouldn't, it would be crazy not to, especially as THE biggest expenditure toy companies have is manufacturing cost. However, a few cents less pails into comparison with the carnage that unreliable supply and / or suppliers can wreak on your business.

The companies with most longevity in this business tend to be those who focus on reliability, in essence, risk reduction, from their supply chain, at the same time as seeking competitive costings.

8. Eggs In Baskets

Why would you ever allow one customer, one supplier, one staff member, one product, one brand one anything for that matter to have the ability to terminally injure your business if you lost it/them? One person departments are all well and good until the one person leaves. Smash hit products are all well and good until the hangover sets in when the hero fades away. Huge numbers via one retailer may be a great bonus, but it should be treated as the icing on the cake - not the basis on which overhead is fixed, or expectations are set.

The reality is in this business, and life in general, people move on, products and brands move in cycles, retail buyers move on. A fundamental factor in companies with longevity in this industry is the ability to survive or even thrive, regardless of the loss of any one 'basket full of eggs.'

I can think of 3 or 4 Toy companies who disappeared during the difficult times we've experienced over the last few years, and they went almost entirely because they relied on one person/entity/thing too much.

We recently launched www.ToyRecruitment.com  – a recruitment agency focused on the world of Toys, Games & Licensing.

We’re different versus standard recruiters due to being industry insiders ourselves. We have most probably sat across from the same retailers as your sales people, dealt with the same management issues as your management team and even sat at the top of the company understanding some of the same pressures you experience on a daily basis. We are able to screen out more unsuitable candidates to stop wasting your time interviewing people who don’t stack up for the role you are recruiting for.

We also have a genuinely strong network Globally. After 25 years working with Toy & Game businesses across the globe, we have good relationships with hundreds (or maybe even 1000+) people of all nationalities and working in all functions. We also have a strong digital reach hitting c. 25,000 people. Our Linked In newsletter alone has 6,300 opt in subscribers. Our specialism is in finding overseas hires for companies in a different country to their Head Office. Needless to say we do charge for deploying the knowledge and contacts built up over 25 years. We work on the same basis as all recruiters – a fixed %age of a full year’s salary. We can discuss that in more detail as and when you are ready to brief in a recruitment project.

Check out www.ToyRecruitment.com for more information.

How Children Have Changed & What That Means For Toy Companies

How Children Have Changed & What That Means For Toy Companies

INTERVIEWING CHILDREN & FAMILIES ABOUT TOYS

I first encountered the toy industry via market research, I was running focus groups with children about a toy promotion back in the late ‘90s. Since then I have conducted more than 1,400 focus groups with children about toys and seen many brands come and go, and some last the distance. Technology when I entered the toy industry was very ‘clunky’ i.e. slow and temperamental! I still have an interactive Yoda toy from this time which was cutting edge, and it is astounding how loud the movements of the toy are versus today’s slick high-tech toys.

Some of the first children I interviewed back from 1998 onwards are now becoming parents themselves, and this thought encourages reflections on how different is the new generation of today versus those kids of the late 1990’s. Biologically speaking, I doubt there is much difference between children today and 20 years ago. But toys are a cultural indicator, they reflect the times to a degree. And the human world in 2018 has changed quite significantly in the last 20 years.

KEY CHANGES AFFECTING CHILDREN:

The Internet Revolution

The children of the late 1990s were not that likely (yet) to be highly active on the internet, although it was in the early stages of meteoric rise. Fast forward to today and children (like adults) take the internet completely for granted. They have instant access to nearly any information, this has had the effect of creating a hugely impatient modern day generation of children. They are far less likely to take the time to concentrate on highly detailed instructions or frustrating activities. Playthings need to work quickly, instructions need to be very intuitive and flawed products will be almost instantly rejected.

Screen time addiction/reduction in time spent playing off screens – the Playstation generation of the late ‘90s were no strangers to screens, however, the screens were not so portable, not so addictive and the software (remember when apps were called software!) was expensive, so there were usually far fewer games available versus the practically unlimited number of apps available on tablets & phones today. Today’s generation of children are addicted to screen time on a vast scale, and therefore we have a whole generation of addicts who need to put down their ‘fix’ to play with toys. Therefore, there is a challenge for toys to remain relevant to kids.

Screen time backlash from parents – from a parental perspective though, the screen time addiction has created more support/more impetus for playing with toys, as parents use toys as an antidote to excessive screen time. Due to inflation over 20 years, toys today are now usually a throwaway purchase as often as they are a really considered purchase, and so economically they are far more accessible. So, this has led to children having vast collections of toys that they play with far less versus previous generations.

Social Media – mass adoption of social media has significant impact on children today versus the 1990s. The biggest single impact we can point to is unboxing videos, which have both changed the toy launch marketing model but also lead to a new type of product as ‘surprise’ driven products have become the hottest sellers for the last few years. From a content perspective, children’s content viewing has increased, but with a tendency to watch more ‘informal’ content, more driven by self-made personalities. This is an ongoing challenge to the classic toy business model of ‘massive movie = massive toy sales’.

Political correctness/Changes in gender perceptions and stereotyping – social norms have changed significantly since the late 1990s. The biggest change affecting children (in many major Western markets) is the shift in gender stereotypes, which is still underway at the time of writing. The classic stereotypes of boys should be tough & rough and therefore have tough & rough toys, and girls should be gentle & have softer toys have softened significantly. It isn’t necessarily that children have changed innately, but more that the gender roles they are assigned by society have loosened up, at least partly driven by the power of social media to name and shame those companies and institutions which maintained the status quo in this area. There are two harsh commercial realities though that toy companies should consider: 1. Today’s parents were kids primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, so many still carry the old gender roles as their default perspective 2. Reflecting the classic psychology debate of ‘nature versus nurture’ in child development, to the degree that nurture defines gender roles and behaviours, this has clearly changed and will probably continue along this path. However, to the degree that ‘nature’ is important, the traditional play patterns while no longer likely to be labelled as ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’ are still likely to prevail to a degree.

Different character matrixes – following the social changes of the past two decades, one definite observation I have made is that the character matrix for hit movie, TV & entertainment properties are likely to be quite different in balance/make up versus twenty years ago. For instance, Black Panther’s predominantly Afro-American characters would have been far less likely twenty years ago. This can surely only be a change for the good, but it does perhaps make it harder for toy companies to predict what will work and what won’t.

KIDS ARE STILL KIDS

In summary then, children are fundamentally still children. They may live in a different media landscape, but they still have the same fundamental needs – to develop their sense of the world and themselves, to develop their physical skills, their brains and their relationships with others. For this reason alone, toys are as relevant and as necessary as they have always been, but if the next twenty years sees changes as dynamic as the last twenty years things could get very interesting!

Do you need help to find the right mid to senior level people? We can help…we have been helping people from across the world of Toys, Games & Licensing to find new roles since 2011. Our client list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ in the industry, think of a Toy company and we have worked with them in some way. Along the way we have met thousands of really talented people who could be your next hire.  Get in touch for more information via the ‘CONTACT’ page if you need help to hire new people, or check out www.ToyRecruitment.com