A kid, a pouch, a really bad idea.note
"Respect the Pouch" was an advertising campaign for Capri Sun juice pouches during the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Each commercial would follow a certain pattern. A kid would be drinking a pouch of Capri Sun and get an idea to destroy the pouch in a creative way. As soon as they damaged the pouch, however, they'd be swiftly punished, usually by transforming into something ironically tied to their actions. Each kid was deemed a "Disrespectoid" and given a name based on their new appearance. For example, a kid dubbed "Leaky Louie" poked holes all over his pouch, so he was cursed to forever leak liquids out of Invisible Holes in his body.
The campaign was successful due to its creative means of drawing attention to Capri Sun's distinct packaging, as well as introducing a wide variety of weird characters in the Disrespectoids. An official website soon followed, comprising character bios, games, and a short webseries featuring the Disrespectoids in animated form. The webseries can be watched here.
Contains examples of:
- Adaptational Dye-Job: Leaky Louie had brown hair in the original ad, but his animated form has black hair.
- And I Must Scream: Some Disrespectoids, such as Boing-Boing Betty, Balloona Luna and Sandy Mandy, get transformed into inanimate objects and are frozen in place (and in Mandy's case, parts of her body fall off). Pop Goes the Peggy (whose head turns into a steering wheel) also qualifies as she seemingly is unable to talk. This is averted in the cartoon, though, where the former two are present and capable of normally interacting with the other children.
- Animal Gender-Bender: Chuck the Clucker, a male chicken hybrid, is drawn as a hen. He can also lay eggs.
- Bigger on the Inside: Slow Moe's shell in the cartoon can hold an entire party of people.
- Body Horror: A lot of the Disrespectoids employ this in a kid-friendly way, though a lot are comical.
- Canon Foreigner: Chuck the Clucker and Handlebar Harry never appeared in commercials but were added to the games on the website and in the cartoon. BobbySue never got a commercial or a game and was only added after the cartoon came out.
- Conjoined Twins: BobbySue are an extreme version; since they stepped on the pouch together, they are stuck to each other's backs.
- Cursed with Awesome: To varying degrees, especially in the cartoon and games. Leaky Louie can spray water from his body at will and isn't shy about putting it to use, and one episode revealed that Slow Moe's shell contains a luxury apartment where he throws a party in the next episode. In the case of Deltoid Donny, it may be a little hard to walk, but his enormous muscles grant him respect from all of his peers.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Messing around with a juice pouch sentences you to a life of disfigurement, in some cases rendering you inanimate. In one commercial (Balloona Luna), she didn't even damage the pouch, but trading with her friend for a couple of water balloons (which he asked her to do!) results in her turning into a balloon animal and floating away.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first commercial didn't give the kid a distinct name based on his punishment, and in most versions of the ad he didn't even transform into anything and was punished in other ways (such as blowing up, losing his clothes, or the pouch setting off a car alarm).
- Egg-Laying Male: In the game and webseries, the chicken/human hybrid Chuck the Clucker is able to lay eggs despite being male.
- For the Evulz: The usual motivation that leads to the kids becoming Disrespectoids.
- Grand Finale: The web-based game "Quest for the Golden Pouch" saw the Disrespectoids go hunting for a Golden Pouch. Upon obtaining it, they were turned back to normal, putting an end to the campaign.
- Guilt by Association Gag: The first commercial has two boys drinking pouches. One finishes and then drops it to the ground and stomps on it despite the other boy shaking his head "No". There are five versions of the commercial. In three of them, only the one kid is punished, but in two of them, the other boy is punished as well despite not doing anything wrong at all. In one of them, he's turned into a grandfather clock, in the other, he's turned into a dog that pees on the other boy who is turned into a fire hydrant.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Chuck the Clucker (part chicken) and Slow Moe (part sea turtle).
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Handlebar Harry and Chewie Stewie were made out to be this way in the animated series, with Stewie introducing Harry to the concept of how Disrespectoids are formed, and him being seen in Harry's bicycle basket for the rest of the series. However, this is undone in "Quest for the Golden Pouch", with Harry being on Bobblehead Fred's team, and Stewie being on Pancake Peggy's team.
- Karma Houdini: The boy who asked Balloona Luna to trade her pouch for his water balloons doesn't get punished at all, but Luna gets turned into a balloon for accepting his trade.
- Karmic Transformation: The whole point of the Disrespectoids is how they transformed into something relating to how they disrespected their Capri Sun pouch.
- Mister Seahorse: Given that Chuck is able to lay eggs, it's only inevitable that one actually hatches into a baby chick.
- Multiple Endings: The original commercial had at least five outcomes after the kid stepped on the pouch. Later commercials had multiple Disrespectoids for the same situation, but instead were online choices to vote for to replace the temporary televised versions that only used question marks: Peggy (the girl with the RC car), Simon (the boy dropping a pouch into a euphonium at band practice), and Don (the kid arm-wrestling over his pouch) each became at least three different Disrespectoids.
- Nice Guy / Nice Girl: In a sea of 13 mutant children, BobbySue are surprisingly the nicest ones/least destructive of the bunch.
- Official Couple: Slow Moe and the Sue half of BobbySue are a couple in the web series. They make out a lot, much to the displeasure of the Bobby half of BobbySue.
- Pubescent Braces: Boing Boing Betty is the only Disrespectoid to have braces, although it's implied that her braces were part of her punishment at the end of 'Legend of the Golden Pouch'.
- Serious Business: The Capri Sun Pouch. Disrespecting it will result in serious consequences.
- Squashed Flat: Pancake Peggy ran over her pouch with an RC car, so she appears Squashed Flat with tire tracks on her, like cartoon roadkill.
- Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Slow Moe is turned into a sea turtle for jumping onto his pouch in the pool (despite sea turtles not actually being very slow).
- Super-Persistent Predator: It's not a meal he's after, but a cat spends an entire episode chasing after Sandy Mandy in hopes of using her as a litterbox. Her dialog implies that this is a regular occurrence for her. Never mind that the entire chase took place on a beach.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Deltoid Donny is cursed with a freakishly muscular upper body paired with spindly legs.
- Whoopee Cushion: As punishment for using an inflated pouch like one, Whoopee Cushner's body is made up of whoopee cushions, so she makes fart sounds wherever she walks.
