I like many of my age group discovered Pee-wee Herman not via his guest spots on The Dating Game or his 1981 stage show but via Tim Burton's debut feature Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which turns 30 ...

A normal kids' show would name its talking chair "Windsor," "Ottoman," or "Adirondack," but Pee-wee's went into the mind of a kid and came up with "Chairry," which is so on target it's perfect.

Parents loved Pee-wee, too, and college kids gathered to watch him in their dorm rooms. When a stage version of the character came to Broadway in 2010, ticket-buyers of all ages went in costume.