Acme Corporation

The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the '' Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote'' animated shorts as a running gag. The company manufactures 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., as well as films, TV series, commercials and comic strips.

Origin

The word Acme comes from the Ancient Greek () meaning , , , or . It has been claimed to be an acronym, either for "A Company Making Everything", "American Companies Make Everything", or "American Company that Manufactures Everything". During the 1920s, the word was commonly used in the names of businesses in order to be listed toward the beginning of alphabetized telephone directories like the Yellow Pages, and implied being the best. It is used in an ironic sense in cartoons, because the products are often failure-prone or explosive.

The name Acme began being depicted in film starting in the silent era, such as the 1920 '' Neighbors'' with Buster Keaton and the 1922 '' Grandma's Boy'' with Harold Lloyd, continuing with TV series, such as in early episodes of ''I Love Lucy'' and ''The Andy Griffith Show'', comic strips and cartoons, especially those made by Warner Bros., and commercials. It briefly appeared in the Walt Disney Donald Duck episodes '' Cured Duck'' released in 1945 and '' Three for Breakfast'' released in 1948. It also appears as the ACME Mining company owned by the villain Rod Lacy in the 1952 Western '' The Duel at Silver Creek'' and in a 1938 short '' Violent Is the Word for Curly'' where The Three Stooges appear as gas station attendants at an ''Acme'' Service Station. It was also used in '' The Pink Panther Show'', where the name Acme was used on several episodes of the show's first installment in 1969, one of them being "Pink Pest Control".

Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones described the reason 'Acme' was used in cartoons at the time:

Whistles and traffic lights

A whistle named 'Acme City', made from mid-1870s onwards by J Hudson & Co, followed by the "Acme Thunderer", and " Acme siren" in 1895, were the early brand names bearing the names with the word 'Acme'. At the time the Acme Traffic Signal Company produced the traffic lights in Los Angeles, the city where Warner Bros. was making its cartoons. Instead of today's amber/yellow traffic light, bells rang as the small red and green lights with "Stop" and "Go" semaphore arms changed — a process that took five seconds.

Depictions

In film and TV

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

* 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 plot is centered on the murder of the corporation's owner, Marvin Acme ( Stubby Kaye). Many of the film's scenes involve Acme products and its final scenes are 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, Calamity Coyote sues Acme, accusing it of making products that are unsafe.
** 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.
** The 2015 direct-to-video animated film '' Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run'' portrays Acme as a department store.
** '' Coyote vs. Acme'' revolves around Wile E. Coyote suing Acme for their faulty products; it is set to be released in 2026.
** The cartoon series '' Loonatics Unleashed'' is set in Acmetropolis.
* The corporation is mentioned/referenced in ''Animaniacs'' numerous times, one of the most prominent examples being the episode "Cookies for Einstein", which features product ads for the "Acme Pocket Fisherman" and "Acme Hair Magnet", as well as the "Acme Song".
**In the recurring segment '' Pinky and the Brain'', which would later receive its own spin-off series, the titular protagonists reside in a cage at 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.
* In the 1998 Spanish film '' The Miracle of P. Tinto'', Acme is referenced along a equally fictional competing Spanish business, Mikasa, a pun on ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial''. When a Mikasa product appears on screen, it is announced in the same tone as Acme products are in the Spanish dubbing of ''Looney Tunes''.
* In the 1978 animated special '' Raggedy Ann and Andy in The Great Santa Claus Caper'' (written, directed, and co-produced by Chuck Jones), Acme is credited as making Gloopstick, touted as a clear indestructible compound to perfectly preserve toys. Gloopstick is brought to Santa Claus' workshop by "inefficiency expert" Alexander Graham Wolf, who strongly resembles Wile E. Coyote in appearance and voice.

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".

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.
*Ian Frazier wrote a fictional legal complaint "''Coyote v. Acme''", which was published in ''The New Yorker'' in 1990 and later became the title piece of a short fiction collection. The story was the inspiration for the film '' Coyote vs. Acme'', which is scheduled to be released in 2026.

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."
* 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' broadcast television network The WB, for which he was also a founding executive, and the Acme name was a reference to the cartoon.
* ACME Night is a Cartoon Network block.
* Acme Tools is an online and in store retailer.

Cultural impact

*In 2011, ''Forbes'' ranked ACME as the second largest fictional corporation.

See also

* Ajax name brand of the Mickey Mouse universe
* List of filmmakers' signatures
* Placeholder name

References

External links

* From - Mock legal opening statement.
*

{{Roger Rabbit

Fictional companies
In-jokes
Looney Tunes
Running gags
Who Framed Roger Rabbit