Buster Baxter

"I know one person who's always happy. He's never been upset for more than three seconds. Buster Baxter. The happiest jolliest most fun."
 * &mdash; Arthur Read, "Buster's Growing Grudge"

Buster Baxter is a third grader at Lakewood Elementary School and is in Mr. Ratburn's 3rd Grade Classroom with his best friend Arthur Read and the rest of his friends. He resides in Elwood City in a condominium with his divorced mother, Bitzi Baxter. He also has his own spin-off series of Arthur titled Postcards from Buster.

Profile

 * Name: Buster
 * Gender: Male
 * Birthday: April 15
 * Age: 8
 * Parents: Bo Baxter (father), Bitzi Baxter (mother)
 * Other Family: Stu (uncle) His grandmother.
 * Also known as: Buster Jam, Buster Read
 * Likes: Eating, Cupcakes, Outer Space, Comics, Aliens, Hanging out with Arthur, Dinosaurs, Bionic Bunny, Collecting old food, Jokes, Video Games
 * Hates: Homework, Poor Grades, Diet Soda, Having Bad Dreams At Night, being grounded

Personality
Buster is easygoing, fun-loving, and somewhat odd. He has a strong interest in space aliens, and claims to have seen flying saucers over Elwood City. His easygoing personality often takes its toll on his performance at school: he sometimes has trouble finishing reports, math assignments, and book reports.

Generally, Buster has a somewhat short attention span. He doesn't have the patience for reading books, unless it's a book he really likes (such as the Scare Your Pants Off series).

Buster also has a strong love for food, and will eat virtually anything, and thus one of the show's running gags features him pigging out wherever he goes. Some of his eating habits are rather unhealthy, though, with him consuming food while following the "5-second rule" or ingesting foods that are beyond expiration. He also has a personal food collection in his room from his various travels or simply because he is fascinated with what he eats on a particular day. His mom often has the job of throwing this food out when it goes really bad. However, he is surprisingly lean.

Buster also is shown to have poor hygiene. He sometimes chooses not to wash his hands when he should, occasionally is very dirty, and doesn't maintain his hair well. In fact, during an outbreak of lice in the school, Buster was the only one unaffected because his hair was simply too dirty to support the vermin.

Although Buster is generally a nice person, he has been shown to resort to stealing if he sees something he wants but can't have. However, after stealing an item, Buster will feel guilty about doing so and sometimes worry about being arrested for breaking the law. In the end Buster will usually return the item. Also if Buster gets angry about something he'll tend to stay angry about it for rather a long time and it is usulally the only thing he'll talk about until he can either forget the situation deal with the situation or speak to the person who caused the problem him if this is the case.

Whenever something happens with no explanation at the time Buster will almost always be completely convinced that is was aliens. The suggestion is usually put down by his friends, yet Buster will continue to suggest Aliens whenever something unexplainable happens. Occasionally when something unexplainable happens, Arthur will suggest Aliens before Buster does. Buster then genuinely believes Arthur until he points out that the only reason he said it was because he knew Buster would've said it if he hadn't.

Buster also has a strong liking for dinosaurs as shown in the picture with it being the focus of one episode.

Buster can sometimes be influenced in a very big way. When Mr. Ratburn's class went on a field trip to an Amish farm Buster became fascinated by their way of life for a short time and even wanted to become Amish himself, and an Amish boy gave him his hat.

When it comes to tests exams or homework Buster is usually forgetful and just carries on with watching TV and hanging out with his mates only usually getting started on the work when it has to be handed in. If Buster is insulted or something he owns is insulted he will get quite angry about it and doesn't talk to the person much afterwards. However when he does although he is still generally still mad with them at first he will usually forgive them after an apology is given or why somebody did what they did.

Appearance
Buster is an anthropomorphic white rabbit who wears a cyan polo shirt with pink collar, jeans, orange boxer shorts with a Saturn design (white briefs in the books), and red and white sneakers. In the books, he wears different-colored shirts. He also has buck-teeth that are visible when he opens his mouth (in the early books, his buck teeth were especially visible with his mouth closed, but the TV series and later books had his buck teeth only visible with his mouth open). His sleepwear includes a purple button-up pajama top with dark pink dinosaur designs, dark pink pajama bottoms, and aardvark slippers. His swimwear includes blue swimming trunks with periwinkle dots. In D.W. All Wet, his mom required him to wear a bathing cap to keep his ears covered, but in many later episodes, Buster no longer wears the bathing cap. On formal occasions Buster wears a navy-blue tuxedo jacket. He also sometimes wears a white shirt, red bow tie, matching trousers and brown shoes.

When he first appeared in Arthur's Eyes in 1979, he had whiskers like a normal rabbit, but the whiskers were removed in Arthur's April Fool in 1983.

Past life
When Buster was a baby, he was wearing a purple shirt, disposable diapers (colored gray instead of white to avoid mixing in with his white complexion), and red and white sneakers. When he was around two years old, he wore a dark bluish-green sweater and light bluish-green shorts and sneakers.

Other Media
In the Living Books computer games such as Arthur's Teacher Trouble and Arthur's Birthday, Buster's complexions ranged from white to cream-colored. In these two games, he was voiced by Robert Bell before the cartoon show replaced him with Daniel Brochu.

Family and home
Buster is the only child of Bitzi and Bo Baxter. His parents are divorced; he lives with his mother in a condominium in central Elwood City. His mother is a worrywart who often fears for Buster's well-being throughout his daily life, but in later seasons she has learned to relax more. They are extremely close and are like best friends. Buster has gone on many travels with his dad, such as in the spin-off series Postcards from Buster. His father, besides in Postcards from Buster, has made appearances in a few episodes. He and Buster are also very close, and Buster thoroughly enjoys the few opportunities he has to see his dad.

In recent seasons, Bitzi started dating Harry Mills, a fellow photographer and journalist at the Elwood City Times. After getting over his initial theory Harry was an alien, Buster became best friends with Harry, having shared the same interests in sports, aliens, etc. Buster was disappointed to learn that his mom broke up with Harry much later on in the show, but the three of them remain the best of friends.

Friends
Buster tends to stick with people in his class to be his friends but he did make friends with Irwin and Sanjeev in Home Sweet Home while they shared a bunk at Camp Meadowcroak.

Arthur Read: He is the best friend of Arthur and they share some interests, like Bionic Bunny, but Arthur thinks his food collection is nasty and UFO's do not exist.

The Brain: He is another one of Buster's friends, despite the fact that whenever he thinks something was caused by aliens he attempts to try to prove him wrong (which has always been successful.)

Francine Frensky: Despite Francine being mean sometimes they have been friends for a long time and still are today.

Other friends are Muffy Crosswire, Binky Barnes, and many more.

Trivia

 * In some episodes of Season 2, Buster made cameos, since his character didn't officially return until Season 3.
 * Buster says he used to have a puppy, but his mom had to send the dog to a farm after causing a lot of trouble.
 * Buster has Asthma revealed in Buster's Breathless.
 * Buster types 10 words per minute.
 * Buster first appeared in the 1979 book Arthur's Eyes.
 * Buster is a forward for the Lakewood Elementary Soccer Team.

Spin-Off
Postcards From Buster