Come on in and pull yourself up a chair (which probably isn’t as cool or fun to be around as Chairy), and we’ll tell you a tale of a man named Pee-Wee Herman and his amazing Playhouse.
Growing up in the 80s meant sharing your Saturday mornings with the hilarious Mr. Herman and his (mostly puppet) pals in the Playhouse, which to my young eyes looked like a dream home built just for a puppet/cartoon nerd like me.
Pee-Wee's Playhouse was a groundbreaking series in many ways- it launched the careers of celebs like Phil Hartman and S. Epatha Merkerson. In addition, Rob Zombie and John Singleton were production assistants on the show, and appearing on the Playhouse was an important early milestone in the careers of Lawrence Fishburne and Jimmy Smits.
To top it all off, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is largely seen as the film that launched Tim Burton's career as a filmmaker, so without Pee-Wee we might not have been exposed to Burton's brilliance!
Want more tasty info nuggets? Read more fun facts about Pee Wee's Playhouse over at mental_floss