[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.