The Acme Corporation or A Company that Makes Everything is a fictional corporation that exists in several cartoons, films and TV series, most significantly in the Looney Tunes universe. It appeared most prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, which made Acme famous for outlandish and downright dangerous products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times. In the 1920s, when categorized business telephone directories (such as the Yellow Pages) began to be popular, there was a flood of businesses named Ace or Acme (some of these still survive); it only increased in popularity in the 1950s for businesses in the United States. The Acme name was so heavily used that it became something of a joke.
The company name is ironic since the word acme is derived from Greek ( ακμή ; English transliteration: acmē ) meaning the peak , zenith or prime . Generally, products from the fictional Acme Corporation are very generic and tend to fail — though often this could be attributed to operator error or misapplication of the product.
The first appearance of the Acme Corporation was in Looney Tunes in a Buddy cartoon ( Buddy's Bug Hunt ). It also appeared in the Egghead cartoon Count Me Out in which Egghead purchases a "Learn How To Box" kit from Acme. In the Road Runner cartoon Beep, Beep , it was referred as "Acme Rocket-Powered Products, Inc." based in Fairfield, NJ.
The company is never clearly defined but appears to be a conglomerate which produces everything and anything imaginable, no matter how elaborate or extravagant—none of which works as desired or expected. An example is the Acme Giant Rubber Band, subtitled "(For Tripping Road Runners)", which would appear to be produced specifically for Wile E. Coyote.
While their products leave much to be desired, Acme delivery service, on the other hand, is second to none; Wile E. can merely drop an order into a mailbox (or enter an order on a website, as seen in the Looney Tunes: Back in Action movie), and have the defective and/or dangerous product in his hands (or on top of him) within seconds.
Early Sears catalogs contained a number of products with the "Acme" trademark, including anvils, which are frequently-used props in Warner Bros. cartoons.
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), film (as early as 1936 in Follow the Fleet, when Fred Astaire uses "Acme Sodium Bicarbonate") and other media.
They are far too numerous to list. Examples which specifically reference the Wile E. Coyote meme 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 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 Bond-esque supervillain called "Mr. Chairman" who is the main antagonist in the movie.
- The cartoon series, Loonatics Unleashed , is set in Acmetropolis.
- The Acme Company appeared in three Woody Woodpecker cartoons
- One of Acme Company's base stations in New York appear in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode Leonardo Cuts Loose .
Live-action films, TV series
- The 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit attempted to explain Acme's inner workings in greater detail. The movie's plot is centered on the murder of Marvin K. Acme, the multi-millionaire founder and CEO of Acme Incorporated. His motto was, "If it's Acme, it's a gasser!" Many of the film's scenes involve Acme products, and the climactic scene of the film is set in the Acme factory.
- 1998 - In the Movie "Armageddon", a reference is made about the Acme corporation failed attempt to catch the roadrunner with an Acme rocket
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" .
Legal humor
- 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 .
Other
- The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language.
- Several owners' manuals for electronic products indicate that only the company's brand of AC adapter should be used with the product, with a drawing of an "Acme brand" AC adapter connected to the product, with a red X over the adapter.
See also
- ACME Detective Agency from the Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? series
- ACME Communications, producer of The Daily Buzz.
- Disney's Ajax
References
- ^ For example, Acme Brick, Acme Markets, Acme Boots, Ace Hardware.
- ^ The Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion
- ^ http://www.torinfo.com/justforlaughs/coyote_v_acme.html
- ^ see The CPAN Search Site
External links
- "Coyote vs Acme"
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