Acme Corporation

This article is about the fictional Looney Tunes company. For other uses, see Acme.

Acme Corporation

Type	Fictional company

A real-world advertisement for ACME anvils.

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 (αιχμή / ακμή ; English transliteration: acmē) meaning the peak, zenith or prime, and products from the fictional Acme Corporation are both generic and failure-prone.

Origin

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). For example, early Sears catalogues contained a number of products with the "Acme" trademark, including anvils, which are frequently used in Warner Bros. cartoons.

" We were little madcaps along the beach and we did what we enjoyed doing and could get dirty and could eat hot dogs and so on. Since we had to search out our own entertainment, we devised our own fairy stories. If you wanted a bow and arrow you got a stick. If you wanted to conduct an orchestra you got a stick. If you wanted a duel you used a stick. You couldn't go and buy one; that's where the terms acme came from. Whenever we played a game where we had a grocery store or something we called it the ACME corporation. Why? Because in the yellow pages if you looked, say, under drugstores, you'd find the first one would be Acme Drugs. Why? Because "AC" was about as high as you could go; it means the best; the superlative.

"

― Chuck Jones

Fictional depiction

The company is never clearly defined in Road Runner cartoons but appears to be a conglomerate which produces every product type 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 to 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)".

Sometimes, Acme can also send living creatures through the mail, though that isn't done very often. Two examples of this are the Acme Wild-Cat, which had been used on Elmer Fudd and Sam Sheepdog (which doesn't maul its intended victim); and Acme Bumblebees in one-fifth bottles (which sting Wile E. Coyote). The Wild Cat was used in the shorts Don't Give Up the Sheep and A Mutt in a Rut, while the bees were used in the short Zoom and Bored.

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", suggesting that either the Road Runner owns the Acme Corporation and built the products to backfire on his enemies or the Road Runner controls the natures of the products to backfire on Coyote.

Appearances

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 Buster Keaton's 1920 silent film Neighbors and Harold Lloyd's 1922 film Grandma's Boy).

Examples which specifically reference the Wile E. Coyote cartoon character include:

Animated films, TV series

• 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 Acme 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." Calamity once sued the company in a People's Court spoof, and its chairman, an anthropomorphic rat named Bobbo Acme, tries to prove its products really do work and that any mishaps are caused by operator error.
• The 1998 movie, Quest for Camelot, shows a magic potion that the insane knight Sir Ruber uses for his army's power, being labeled 'Acme' on the vial's content.
• 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 The Simpsons episode "Last Tap Dance in Springfield", rat traps Chief Wiggum uses to catch a culprit are made by the company Wile E. Coyote patronized.
• 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 siblings and other characters live in the village of Acme Falls.
• In Pinky and the Brain and in Animaniacs Pinky and the Brain are based in ACME Labs.
• External World, David O'Reilly's short film, features Acme Retirement Castle, a dystopian retirement facility for disabled cartoon characters.
• In Baby Looney Tunes the episode Are We There Yet?its called the Acme Garlic Festival an in the episode Time and Time Again Baby Daffy gets a delivery from Acme Toys

Live-action films, TV series

• The 1988 Disney/Amblin film Who Framed Roger Rabbit attempted to explain Acme's inner workings in detail. The movie's plot is centered on the murder of Marvin Acme, 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. The Acme Corporation also appeared to produce non-Toonish devices, and had a company slogan: "If it's Acme, it's a gasser".
• 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 web series Web Therapy (2009), a reference is made to ACME by Lisa Kudrow's character Fiona Wallice as a non-reliable DNA lab, its label including 'a Road Runner and a coyote'.
• In the TV series My Name Is Earl season 3, episode 4, Randy (Earl's brother) imagines/writes a creative story where he is a superhero who is about to save his brother and maid Catalina. Earl and Catalina are held in a room with a pile of boxes around them all having the name ACME on them. Randy, being a simple special person, is for sure thinking about Wile E. Coyote.

Music

• 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".
• The Brazilian thrash metal Chakal has a song titled "Acme Dead End Road" from its 1990 album, The Man Is His Own Jackal. The song begins with the Road Runner signature sound "beep, beep".

Legal humor

• Joey Green wrote "Cliff-Hanger Justice," a fictional account of a product liability lawsuit by Wile E. Coyote against Acme, which appeared in three parts in the August 1982, September 1982, and October 1982 issues of National Lampoon magazine.
• 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.

Other

• The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language.
• It is a common misconception that Acme is an acronym standing for such things as "A Company that Makes Everything", "American Companies Make Everything" or "American Company that Manufactures Everything".

See also

• Disney's Ajax

External links

• "Wile E. Coyote vs. Acme Company". 'Lectric Law Library. Archived from the original on October 24, 2009. {{cite web}}: — Mock legal opening statement

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