Buster Brown: Marketing a Name

Unlike his Yellow Kid, Outcault’s Buster Brown was a wealthy youth—dressed in the eponymous suit of a belted tunic, straw hat, and pageboy haircut. Buster Brown featured the mischievous antics of Buster Brown, his sweetheart Mary Jane, and his dog Tige. The strip was so popular that Outcault licensed its characters to a variety of products, most notably the Buster Brown children’s shoe. Despite its relative brevity in newspapers (1902–1921), Buster Brown lived on in theater, radio, film, television, and comic books.