Fictional company featured in Looney Tunes cartoons
This article is about the fictional Looney Tunes company. For other uses, see Acme.
An example of an Acme product from a Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoon
The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote animated shorts as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail or backfire catastrophically at the worst possible times. The name is also used as a generic title in many cartoons, especially those made by Warner Bros., and films, TV series, commercials and comic strips.
The company name in the Road Runner cartoons is ironic,[1] since the word acme is derived from Greek (ακμή; English transliteration: akmē) meaning the peak, zenith or prime,[2] yet products from the fictional Acme Corporation are often generic, failure-prone, or explosive.
History
Acme means "highest point", so the name was popularized by companies wanting to symbolize the best.
A real-world advertisement for ACME anvils
An early global Acme brand name was the "Acme City" whistle made from mid-1870s onwards by J Hudson & Co, followed by the "Acme Thunderer", and "Acme siren" in 1895. The name became particularly popular for businesses in the 1920s, when alphabetized business telephone directories such as the Yellow Pages began to be widespread: A name at the beginning of the alphabet would be listed first, and a name implying "the best" was even better. There was a flood of businesses named Acme; some survive to this day, including Acme Brick, Acme Markets, and Acme Boots. Early Sears catalogues contained a number of products with the "Acme" trademark, including anvils, which are frequently used in Warner Bros. cartoons.[3]
The name Acme also had other connotations for people in Los Angeles at the time. During the time the Warner Bros. cartoons were being produced, the traffic lights in Los Angeles were manufactured by the Acme Traffic Signal Company. The traffic lights paired "Stop" and "Go" semaphore arms with small red and green lights. Bells played the role of today's amber or yellow lights, ringing when the flags changed—a process that took five seconds.[4]
It is a common misbelief that ACME was intended by cartoonists to be an acronym. ACME has variously been attributed to stand for "A Company Making Everything", "American Companies Make Everything" and "American Company that Manufactures Everything".[5][6]
Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones has said the name Acme was chosen because of its prevalence:
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.[7]
The Acme semaphore traffic lights were often used in Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for comedic effect due to their loud bell which was often followed by screeching tires and many sight gags.
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—most of which never work as desired or expected (some products do work very well, but backfire against the coyote). 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)".
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.
Appearances
A mural of Wile E. Coyote smashed into an ACME Instant Tunnel on the wall of the Rotch Library at MIT
The name "Acme" is used as a generic corporate name in a huge number of cartoons, comics, television shows, such as in early episodes of I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show, and film, from the silent era onward in such titles as Buster Keaton's silent film Neighbors (1920) and Harold Lloyd's Grandma's Boy (1922). Acme is also briefly featured in the Walt Disney Donald Duck episode Cured Duck released in 1945.
Examples which specifically reference the Wile E. Coyote cartoon character include:
Animated films and TV series
Films, shows and cartoons based on Looney Tunes characters often deal with Acme Corporation.
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 corporation's founder, Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye). Many of the film's scenes involve Acme products, and the film's climax is set in an Acme warehouse.
The Tiny Toon 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". In one episode, the coyote sues Acme, accusing it of making products that are unsafe.[8]
The corporation appears as the antagonistic force of Looney Tunes: Back in Action. The head offices of Acme are depicted, revealing it to be a multinational corporation whose executive officers are led by the film's main antagonist, Mr. Chairman, portrayed by Steve Martin.
The 2015 direct-to-video animated film Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run portrays Acme as a department store.
In August 2018, Warner Bros. announced they were developing a Coyote Vs. Acme animated movie with Chris McKay producing and Jon and Josh Silberman completing the script.[9] However, by December 2019, the project was reportedly looking for a writer.[10][11] A year later, James Gunn was announced as both producer and writer on the project and a release date in 2023.[12]
The cartoon series Loonatics Unleashed is set in Acmetropolis.
The corporation is mentioned in Animaniacs, such as the Acme song from Cookies for Einstein, and Pinky and the Brain's home in Acme Labs. In Wakko's Wish, the Animaniacs feature film, characters live in the village of Acme Falls.
External World, a short film by David OReilly, features Acme Retirement Castle, a dystopian retirement facility for disabled cartoon characters.
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 band 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".[13]
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, September, and October 1982 issues of National Lampoon magazine.[14]
Ian Frazier wrote a fictional legal complaint "Coyote vs. Acme", which was published in The New Yorker[15] and eventually became the title piece of a short fiction collection.
Other
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language. It was named "in homage to that greatest of all absurd system creators: Wile E. Coyote."[16]
Acme Communications was a former U.S. broadcasting company established by former Fox Broadcasting Company executive Jamie Kellner. The stations were affiliated with Warner Bros's broadcast television network The WB, for which he was also a founding executive, and the Acme name was a reference to the cartoon.[17][18]
^Peggy Stern and John Canemaker (filmmakers) (March 24, 2009). Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (Documentary). Turner Classic Movies and Warner Bros. Event occurs at 12 min. Retrieved April 29, 2009.
^"K-Acme TV". Tiny Toon Adventures. Season 1. Episode 64. 26 February 1991.
9:32
