Everyone knows Stitch. He’s the blue, four-armed "puppy" with a temper and a love for Elvis. But honestly, he was just the beginning. Before Dr. Jumba Jookiba got to 626, he had a long, chaotic road of 625 other failures, successes, and straight-up weird accidents.
Most people don't realize that the "cousins" aren't just background characters. They are individual personalities with specialized powers—and some of them are way more dangerous (or annoying) than Stitch himself.
The 0-Series: Jumba’s Trial and Error
Jumba didn't just wake up and create a galaxy-class wrecking ball. He started small. The 0-Series was basically his test batch. These guys were mostly designed for household disruption or proof-of-concept testing.
You've got guys like Experiment 001 (Shrink). He does exactly what the name says. He looks like a little purple bug with three legs and can make anything tiny. Then there’s Gigi (007). She looks exactly like a Shih Tzu. Her "evil" power? Barking. Constantly. She ended up being the pet of Lilo’s rival, Mertle Edmonds, which is kind of the perfect "true place" for a creature designed to be annoying.
One of my personal favorites from this era is Felix (010). He’s a green, trunk-nosed neat freak. He was designed to "sterilize" the planet, but he interprets everything—including people—as germs. Eventually, Lilo and Stitch fixed him up, and now he works as a high-tech vacuum cleaner.
2-Series and 5-Series: Elemental Chaos
When Jumba moved into the later series, things got much more destructive. The 5-Series is where the heavy hitters live. These are the ones designed for environmental manipulation.
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Richter (513) is a purple, ankylosaur-looking guy who can cause massive earthquakes just by slamming his tail. Or look at Splodyhead (619) and Slushy (523). They are polar opposites—one breathes fire, the other freezes everything.
Notable Elemental Cousins:
- Sparky (221): The first cousin Lilo and Stitch ever caught. He’s pure electricity. If you’ve seen the show, you know he powers the local lighthouse now.
- Yin and Yang (501 & 502): One shoots water, the other shoots lava. Together, they actually created a new island in Hawaii. That's a pretty productive day for "evil" experiments.
- Digger (529): A golden, drill-nosed creature that can tear through asphalt in seconds.
The "One True Place" Concept
The heart of the Lilo & Stitch series isn't just about catching monsters. It’s about Ohana. Jumba designed these creatures to be monsters, but Lilo saw them as family members who just didn't have a job yet.
Take Frenchfry (062). He was designed to make delicious food to fatten up victims so Jumba could eat them. Creepy, right? But in the end, he found his "one true place" as a chef at a fry shack. No eating humans required.
Then there's Angel (624). She’s Stitch’s love interest, but her power is actually terrifying. She sings a siren song that turns any good experiment evil. If she sings it backward, it turns them good again. It’s a classic redemption arc that makes her one of the most popular cousins in the entire franchise.
The Powerhouses: 625, 627, and Leroy
Not every experiment is a success in the way Stitch is. Experiment 625, better known as Reuben, has all of Stitch's powers. He can climb walls, lift cars, and process data like a supercomputer.
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The problem? He’s incredibly lazy. All he wants to do is make sandwiches. Honestly, same. He spent most of the series as Gantu’s sarcastic sidekick, making hoagies while Gantu failed to catch other experiments.
Then there is 627. Jumba made him on Earth specifically because Stitch was getting "too nice." 627 has the powers of 20 different experiments and zero capacity for kindness. He’s the only one (besides Leroy) who couldn't be turned good. He eventually laughed himself into a dehydrated state.
Leroy (629) is the final boss. He’s a red version of Stitch created by Jumba under duress from Dr. Hämsterviel. He’s meaner, faster, and has a whole army of clones. The only way Lilo and Stitch beat him was through the power of music—specifically "Aloha ʻOe."
Ranking the Weirdest Powers
Some experiments are just... weird.
- Nosy (199): All he does is dig up embarrassing secrets and gossip.
- Topper (025): He’s shaped like a star and glows. He’s literally a Christmas tree topper now.
- Hertz Donut (022): A circular experiment that trips people.
- Shoe (113): Originally created to cause bad luck by being a "broken" horseshoe, but when his head-gear is flipped, he becomes a good luck charm.
Finding the Full List
If you're looking for every single one of the 626 cousins, you have to look at the credits of Leroy & Stitch. The producers actually scrolled through the entire list of names and numbers. While we only saw about 150 of them in action across the movies and the two-season TV show, the lore confirms that every single one has a design and a purpose.
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Most of the "filler" experiments were designed as background characters for the final battle in Hawaii. They might look like recolors of Sparky or Stitch, but in the fan community, people have spent years theorizing about what Experiment 033 (Hammerface) or Experiment 300 (Spooky) can really do when they aren't just standing in a crowd.
To really get the full experience of the experiment collection, you should watch the episodes in order of the "pods" being activated. It’s a masterclass in character design. Each one feels like it belongs in the same universe but serves a totally different, specific niche of chaos.
If you're trying to track them all down today, start by looking for the "Big Book of Experiments" online archives. Fan-run wikis have cataloged every frame where a nameless cousin appears, matching them to the official list provided by Disney creators like Jess Winfield. It’s a deep rabbit hole, but for any Stitch fan, it’s the only way to truly understand the scope of Jumba’s genius—and his madness.
The next step is to re-watch the original series pilot. It sets the stage for how these little pods became a family. Pay close attention to the background of Jumba’s lab; you might spot a few pods that don't get their own spotlight until much later.