The Wiggles

Though their core audiences lie a considerable distance apart on the age spectrum, children's-music superstars the Wiggles have a lot in common with the Rolling Stones. Both groups sell out concerts all over the world, have spawned ­multimillion-dollar merchandising empires and made more money than Nicole Kidman in 2005. And believe it or not, the Wiggles' roots lie in the same seedy Australian pub-rock scene that spawned AC/DC and INXS — future Wiggles Tony Field and Jeff Fatt spent most of the 1980s in the minorly successful Cockroaches, a band that took its name from a onetime Stones pseudonym. In 1991, the pair hooked up with fellow preschool teachers Murray Cook and Greg Page and watched their bank accounts swell on the strength of hit albums like Wiggly Wiggly World and Here Comes the Big Red Car. And live, while kids may key onto ­supporting-cast members like Wags the Dog, Captain Feathersword and Dorothy the Dinosaur as much as the Wiggles' goofy, good-natured songs, it's unlikely their parents would shell out for tickets at all if the music wasn't at least tolerable.