Buster Brown (cartoon character)
Buster Brown is an advertising and cartoon character created by Richard Felton Outcault in 1902 .
The hero's first name was probably borrowed from Buster Keaton , who was already a vaudeville child star at the time. The newspaper comic Buster Brown first appeared in the New York Herald on May 4, 1902 . When Outcault switched to the Hearst newspapers in 1906 , the Herald and Hearst broke legal dispute . The court ruled that Outcault as the creator could take his created character with him, but that the eponymous name had to remain with the Herald . So appeared Buster Brown on the Herald until probably 1911 , while Outcaults version at Hearst to 1921 appeared.
In 1904 the Brown Shoe Company acquired the naming rights to Buster Brown and presented the brand name created in this way for the first time at the World Exhibition in St. Louis . The company advertised its products through short people who, disguised as Buster Brown and accompanied by a dog, appeared in shoe stores and department stores until the 1930s. To this day, the Brown Shoe Company uses the name and recently redesigned Buster Brown logo to advertise children's shoes.
In the 1920s, some real film adaptations of the were Stern Bros. created. The little dog Tige was played by "Pete the Pup". It was directed by Gus Meins , who later also took part in the popular film adaptations of Our Gang (Little Rascals = " The Little Rascals ").
Content
As a comic book character, Buster Brown is a vicious, always old-fashioned little boy. His sister's name is Mary Jane and his dog is Tige . Tige is said to have been the first dog in comics who could speak, which adults could not hear in the comic. The success of the comic strips resulted from the fact that, unlike the Katzenjammer Kids or The Yellow Kid , he played in the upper class and ended the stories with mild moral messages instead of, as in other strips, the usual spanking for those who were off the hook beating heroes.
literature
- Balzer, Jens / Wiesing, Lambert: Outcault. The invention of the comic. Bochum, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-941030-07-7
