Acme Corporation

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This article is about the fictional Looney Tunes company. For other uses, see Companies named Acme.
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The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that exists in several cartoons, films and TV series, most significantly in the Looney Tunes universe, where it appeared most prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, which made Acme famous for outlandish and downright dangerous products that failed catastrophically at the worst possible times.

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.

The company is never clearly defined but is widely believed to be an acronym for American company making everything. It appears to be a conglomerate which produces everything and anything imaginable, no matter how elaborate or extravagant. An example is the Acme Giant Rubber Band, subtitled "(For Tripping Road Runners)", which would appear to be produced specifically for Wile E. Coyote. Acme is often used whenever a cartoon, film or similar needs a corporation for a product, and instead of stealing an existing (perhaps leading to trademark issues) or making one up, they simply use Acme.

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[edit] Name

The company name is ironic since the word acme is derived from Greek (ακμή) 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 malfunction.

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 Web site, 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.

[edit] Inspiration

About 80 years ago, when categorized business telephone directories (such as the Yellow Pages) began to be popular, business owners realized that businesses whose names began with "A" would get listed at the beginnings of their categories. A name implying that its company was the best was so much the better. The result was a flood of businesses named Acme (some of these still survive[1]); the name was so heavily used that it became something of a joke. The joke spread to Warner Bros. cartoons; in 1949, it made its first appearance in a Road Runner cartoon.

Since the fictional Acme's products are typically mail-ordered, it is likely that the famous Sears mail-order catalogues were a strong inspiration for the fictional company. Early Sears catalogs contained a number of products with the "Acme" trademark, including anvils, which are frequently-used props in Warner Bros. cartoons[2].

[edit] Appearances

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[edit] Cartoons

  • In the cartoon series, Wile E. Coyote frequently purchased Acme products via mail order (In some cases, we see Coyote receiving his packages just seconds after he mails the order slip). His Acme arsenal included weapons, rockets, springs, giant magnets, iron-laced bird seed, (at one point, they even sell a fifth bottle of bumblebees) and other devices for his inventive and endless attempts to catch the Road Runner. Acme products tended to backfire (often literally) in a comedic fashion; the National Lampoon magazine ran a feature in which a fictitious "lawsuit" against Acme catalogued the repeated failure of Acme products and Coyote's frequent resulting physical injuries[3]. In fairness it must be said that some Acme products do work quite well, specifically the Rocket Sled, the Jet Powered Roller Skates, the Instant Tornado Pills, and the Triple-Strength Leg Muscle Vitamins. Typically, Acme products failed for hapless characters such as Wile E. or Sylvester the Cat while working properly for the more heroic Bugs Bunny.
  • In the Donald Duck cartoons sometimes they have the title Acme on the kitchen ware, gas stations, & tools.
  • The unnamed protagonist in the classic One Froggy Evening began the episode employed by Acme Building and Wrecking Co., and we see the company still going strong in the future, appearing in 2056 as Acme Building Disintegrators.
  • 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."
  • In the Animaniacs, some episodes takes place in Acme Falls.
  • In an episode of Animaniacs, Albert Einstein was having trouble coming up with his E = mc² equation, and Yakko, Wakko and Dot came in and wrote the word "ACME" backwards (Wakko wrote the "A" in "ACME" as a "hook a", which looked like a "2") and Einstein proceeded to include an "=" between the "M" and the "E", ending up with "E=mc²".
  • 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. Here, Acme is similar to the Virtucon company from the Austin Powers movies, with Mr. Chairman filling the role of Doctor Evil.
  • 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.
  • Acme was also mentioned twice in the show Class of 3000: In "Westley Side Story", Eddie gives a coyote $100, anticipating its purchase of Acme Rocket Skates, and The Acme Corporation supplies the school with tomatoes, as seen in "Am I Blue".
  • Acme was also used extensively by Gary Larson in his comic The Far Side as a generic trademark attached to all kinds of companies and products.
  • In the Warner Bros. Animation film, Quest for Camelot, the film's villain, Lord Ruber, uses a magic potion to turn his men into living weapons. The vial containing the potion has the word "ACME" written on the side.
The 1997 episode entitled "Realty Bites" featured attempts by Snake to recover his car from Homer; one of these is to set up piano wire supplied by Acme across a road to decapitate Homer as he drives by.
In the 2000 episode entitled "Last Tap Dance in Springfield", Chief Wiggum uses Acme brand giant rat traps in the mall.
In the episode entitled "The Day the Violence Died", Itchy uses Acme brand rollerskates.

[edit] Films and TV series

  • The Acme logo has appeared in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, stamped on the black powder boxes.
  • The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language[4].
  • Parts of the Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero feature Acme products in the film world.
  • A book, the fictional ACME PRODUCTS CATALOG was published in 2002.
  • ACME is the brand of fuel sold at Wally's Filling station in the 1960s CBS Television Network series The Andy Griffith Show.
  • In the Jim Carrey movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, when Ace's friend Woodstock searches on his computer, "ACME DATABASES SERVICES" is written on top of the screen.
  • Ian Frazier's 26 February 1990 New Yorker article "Coyote vs. Acme" (later collected in a book of the same title), written in the form of a legal complaint: "As the court is no doubt aware, Defendant has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and the sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote's work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands."
  • Termites of 1938 is an early Three Stooges short film, where the Stooges disrupt a high society dinner party. The trouble begins when a rich society woman has no date for a high-society party and the hostess recommends that she use the Acme Escort Service. The woman has her maid dial them up, after mentioning that she hopes that they will be discriminating, but the maid calls the Acme Exterminators instead. The exterminators are, of course, the Three Stooges - Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard.
  • Acme also appeared in My Name Is Earl in an episode titled "Creative Writing".
  • In the Monty Python's sketch The Crimson Permanent Assurance, Acme apears written on the building's sail and Acme Construction Company appears as subsidiary of the Very Big Corporation Of America.
  • In the 1991 movie JFK, when Jim Garrison is recounting the events that lead to JFK's death during court, there is a flash back scene that shows the school book depository with employees wearing uniforms that say ACME on the back.
  • In the fourth episode in Season 3 of The Sopranos, an ACME cola company had a vending machine in Dr. Melfi's dream.
  • The 1946 film The Big Sleep contains a scene where Humphrey Bogart enters a book store named simply "Acme Books".

[edit] Computer games

ACME on a wall in Team Fortress 2
ACME on a wall in Team Fortress 2
  • Acme appears in two Commander Keen games: in episode two, as the maker of the blueprints for the mothership that acts as a main map; and in episode four, as the maker of the Oracle at the end of the game.
  • The Duke Nukem 2D computer game featured ACME bricks which fall upon you, causing a loss of health points.
  • In Team Fortress 2, ACME appears on buildings in a train yard.



[edit] Science

  • ACME LAB is a short name of John Bargh's psychological lab at Yale University. The ACME LAB [[1]] – Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation - focuses on unconscious or automatic ways in which our current environmental surroundings cause us to think, feel, and behave in ways without our conscious intention or knowledge.

[edit] References

  1. ^ For example, Acme Markets, Acme Boots.
  2. ^ The Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion
  3. ^ Report of an action brought against Acme Corporation by Wile E. Coyote, Judge Homer Simpson presiding
  4. ^ see The CPAN Search Site

[edit] External links