Stitch is big. Part of that may be the new Stitch ride — but Stitch is big at the Disney parks. Lots of Stitch swag, of all sorts. Stitch seems to have “broken through,” at least for the moment, into the canon of Major Disney Icons.
But why? It might be that he’s the most successful recent Disney property that isn’t from Pixar. But it’s more than that. I realized as I was wandering about the Magic Kingdom, seeing the umpteenth display of Stitch Christmas shirts and dolls and hats.
I think Stitch fills an ecological niche that’s been missing.
Stitch is Tink, only for boys.
Tinkerbell is the sassy, attitudinal rule-breaker of the Disneyverse. She’s cute, sure, in that wild child sort fashion. She learns some lessons the hard way, but she’s unabashedly her own person, very little guilt, lots and lots of fun.
There are some other female characters who touch on that a bit, but most of them learn harder lessons. The only other “extreme” Disney female, though, is Jessica Rabbit, who is more of a character for, um, the guys. She still shows up, usually in conjunction with as sexual a message as Disney dares.
So Tink is it. Want a “bad girl” with a twinkle, a mixture of innocence, mischief, and sass? It’s Tink.
Plus, she’s kind of safe. She’s a fairy, after all. No “bad lessons” there. She’s a force of nature, and you can admire her spunk and independence without fear that some kid will really take her on as a role model.
Which brings us to Stitch.
Well, that’s all Stitch, too. Jackie’s comment, after seeing the original movie, was that Stitch is “evil.” Certainly he’s a force of nature, mischievous, sassy, destructive — and, yet, as an artificial life form, he’s also safe. You can laugh at him, admire his independence (which remains a bit innocent because he never learned better until recently), without fearing that he’s being a bad role model for kids.
Hell, I have a lot of fondness both Stich and Tink, for the same reasons, even if they are probably the characters most diametrically opposed to my own personality.
Stitch has two additional advantages. He’s “fresh” (relative to Tink), and he’s a boy (it is presumed, and he is so labelled). That means that boys, who would never be caught dead with Tinkerbell on their shirt, can have Stitch with no worries about being labelled as, well, a fairy.
He’s even a bit more animalistically aggressive (not just attitudinal) than Tink. Perfect for boys.
There’s nobody else in the Disney canon that fits that. Donald is prissy and egotistical. Peter Pan (Tink’s cinematic buddy) would have been a possibility, but he hasn’t had the exposure of late, and he seems to have fallen out of favor with kids. Simba has his slacker phase, but he eventually becomes his father (a memetic fate worse than death). Who else (villains aside) fits, especially if you avoid the Pixar characters (which, with some minor exceptions, Disney does)? Everyone else is too much of a good guy, too much of a nice guy, too much of a “kiddy” character, and/or too female.
Which leaves us with Tink and Stitch.
Probably this is considered cliched wisdom in some quarters, but I’ve never heard of it. I’m rather proud of the revelation, to be honest.