The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times. The name is also used as a generic title in many cartoons, films and TV series.

The company name in the Road Runner cartoons is ironic, since the word acme is derived from Greek (ακμή; English transliteration: acmē) meaning the peak, zenith or prime, and products from the fictional Acme Corporation are both generic and tend to fail.

Contents 1 Origin 2 Fictional depiction 3 Appearances 3.1 Animated films, TV series 3.2 Live-action films, TV series 3.3 Music 3.4 Legal humor 3.5 Other 4 See also 5 References 6 External links 7 Comments

Origin Edit

The name Acme became popular for businesses by the 1920s, when alphabetized business telephone directories such as the Yellow Pages began to be widespread. There were a flood of businesses named Acme (some of these still survive^[1]). For example, early Sears catalogs contained a number of products with the "Acme" trademark, including anvils, which are frequently used in Warner Bros. cartoons.^[2]

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Fictional depiction Edit

The company is never clearly defined in Road Runner cartoons but appears to be a conglomerate which produces every type of product imaginable, no matter how elaborate or extravagant - none of which ever work as desired or expected. In the Road Runner cartoon Beep, Beep, it was referred as "Acme Rocket-Powered Products, Inc." based in Fairfield, New Jersey. Many of its products appear to be produced specifically for Wile E. Coyote; for example, the Acme Giant Rubber Band, subtitled "(For Tripping Road Runners)".

While their products leave much to be desired, Acme delivery service is second to none; Wile E. can merely drop an order into a mailbox (or enter an order on a website, as in the Looney Tunes: Back in Action movie), and have the product in his hands within seconds.

In one of the later episodes, it is revealed that Acme is "A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of Roadrunner Corporation."^[3]

AppearancesEdit

The name "Acme" is used as a generic corporate name in a huge number of cartoons, comics, television shows (as early as an I Love Lucy episode), and film (as early as Harold Lloyd's 1922 silent film Grandma's Boy).

Examples which specifically reference the Wile E. Coyote meme include:

Animated films, TV series Edit

• The Tiny Toons Adventures series expanded on Acme's influence, with the entire setting of the show taking place in a city called "Acme Acres". The show's young protagonists attended "Acme Looniversity." Calamity Coyote often bought products from the fictional Acme company in his quest to catch the road-runner Little Beeper. In one episode, the company revealed its slogan: "For fifty years, the leader in creative mayhem."
• The 2003 movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action showed the head offices of Acme, revealed to be a multinational corporation whose executive officers were led by a supervillain called "Mr. Chairman", portrayed by Steve Martin.
• The cartoon series, Loonatics Unleashed, is set in Acmetropolis.
• In Family Guy, Peter is seen running an Acme store and Wile E. Coyote is complaining about some of the products he purchased which failed and mentions his many years of being an Acme customer. Peter offers to give him store credit.
• In Wakko's Wish, the Animaniacs feature film, the Warner Brothers and other characters live in the village of Acme Falls.

Live-action films, TV seriesEdit

• The 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit attempted to explain Acme's inner workings in detail. The movie's plot is centered on the murder of the founder of Acme Incorporated. Many of the film's scenes involve Acme products, and the climactic scene of the film is set in the Acme factory.
• In the movie Armageddon (1998), a reference is made to Coyote's failed attempts to catch the Road Runner with an Acme rocket.
• In Last Action Hero, ACME products (ACME dynamite, ACME Storage Center cardboard boxes, ACME video store, old ACME Engineering sign, ACME construction crane...) can be seen in the "Jack Slater IV" movie. An excerpt from a Wile E. Coyote cartoon is also shown early in the movie.
• In the television series The Sopranos "Employee of the Month" Dr. Jennifer Melfi has a dream where she is using a soda vending machine called ACME Cola

MusicEdit

• Bell X1's song "One Stringed Harp" includes the lyric "Like Wile E. Coyote/As if the fall wasn't enough/Those bastards from Acme/They got more nasty stuff".

singer grace jones has a line in her song 'the apple stretching' " at the acme discount store over in queens" from the album 'living my life'

Legal humorEdit

• Ian Frazier wrote a fictional opening statement as a humor article in The New Yorker Magazine (v66, Feb 26, 1990, p. 42) in the form of a lawsuit by Wile E. Coyote against the Acme Products Company. The piece is the title work of his collection, Coyote v. Acme (New York: Noonday Press) 1997 ISBN 0-374-52491-2; ISBN 978-0-374-52491-3.^[4]

OtherEdit

• The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language.^[5]

See also Edit

• Disney's Ajax

ReferencesEdit

External linksEdit

• "Coyote vs Acme" (Archived 2009-10-24) - Mock legal opening statement

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