The winking boy with his dog, Tige, made his way into everything — comic books, radio, TV and theater spots. For decades he proved a superb fit for Brown Shoe, which has stumbled some in recent years as it grows into a larger concern owning store chains and other shoe lines.

Shares in the suburban St. Louis-based company are trading at around $27, narrowly above its 52-week low of $25.35 and well below its high for the year of about $42. In recent years it has worked at restructuring, closing stores in its Naturalizer chain and laying off workers.

Since then, Brown Shoe has grown, returning its global workforce to about 11,500 workers, and now happily celebrates Buster's anniversary.

"Few brands ever make it to 100 years," Brown Shoe spokeswoman Beth Fagan says. "So when you have a cherished brand like Buster Brown that can say it's been putting shoes on the feet of children for 100 years, it's a real milestone."

Buster Brown debuted in Richard Outcault's comic strip in the New York Herald on May 4, 1902, nearly a quarter century after shoemaking Bryan, Brown & Co. got its start. It later changed its name to Brown Shoe Co.

Readers knew that Buster Brown — despite each comic strip's "resolve" panel, where Buster pledged to walk the straight and narrow — soon would be in trouble again, putting extra spice in food or lacing his mom's shampoo with honey.

"I will be as good as I can, until temptation comes," he intoned.

At the 1904 World's Fair, Outcault licensed the character to several dozen companies at a time when copyrights to comic characters didn't exist, said Richard Olson, an expert on Outcault and his works.

As a rising young Brown Shoe sales executive, John Bush apparently saw the value of the Buster Brown name as a trademark for youth shoes and persuaded the company to buy the rights to the name.

Brown Shoe is said to have paid $200. Then it began its marketing push.

An army of small circus performers with small dogs resembling Tige was dispatched across the country, portraying Buster Brown while pitching the shoes at theaters, department stores and shoe shops. In many areas, entire towns turned out to watch.

In 1910, Brown Shoe published "Buster Brown's Jokes and Jingles," a booklet that kids got with a purchase of the shoes. A year later, Buster Brown starred in the company's first national ads in "The Saturday Evening Post." With the dawn of movie theaters nationwide, Brown Shoe by 1913 was making Buster Brown a star of short films.

Four years later, a sweeping advertising campaign in that time's most popular magazines made Buster Brown shoes a national brand.

Though Outcault drew Buster Brown until about 1920, the comic kid and his canine never faded. In the mid-1920s, the rascal and his dog spent an hour each Monday and Friday entertaining on the Buster Brown Radio Club.

While the nation was at war in 1943, an advertising company — on behalf of the shoe brand — launched "The Buster Brown Gang," a children's radio show with Smilin' Ed McConnell.

Seven years later, the program crossed over onto television as a Saturday morning fixture that paid off for Brown Shoe, which saw its shoe sales rocket from $6 million in 1945 to $30 million in 1954.

"I'm not quite sure why Buster Brown became so popular," Olson said. "If I did, I'd probably make a lot of money."

By 1958, Buster Brown shoes were the world's best seller for children, by then versed in the well-worn tag line: "That's my dog, Tige. He lives in a shoe. I'm Buster Brown. Look for me in there, too."