This article is about the fictional Looney Tunes company. For other uses, see Companies named Acme.
The
Acme Corporation is a fictional
corporation that exists 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 failed catastrophically at the worst possible times.
The first appearance of the Acme Corporation was 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 appears to be a
conglomerate which produces everything and anything imaginable (leading to the
backronym "American Company Making Everything" or "A Company (that) Makes Everything"), 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.
The company name is
ironic since the word
acme actually means the best or pinnacle. Generally, products from the fictional Acme Corporation are very
generic and tend to fail.
Acme delivery service, on the other hand, is second to none. The Coyote can literally drop an order into a mailbox (or enter an order on a Web site in the "" movie), and have the defective and/or dangerous product in his hands within seconds.
Inspiration
Since the Acme products are typically mail-ordered, it is likely that the famous
Sears mail-order catalogs 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
[1].
Another influence could be the long-established practice of real companies using Acme (or anything starting with one or more A's) as their name, to create name recognition, and so that they will appear near the front of the phone book.
Appearance in cartoons
Warner Brothers 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, and other devices for his inventive and endless attempts to catch the Road Runner. Acme products usually 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
[2]. 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 the Coyote or
Sylvester the Cat while working properly for the more heroic
Bugs Bunny.
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 cartoon
Pinky and the Brain, the duo lived in "Acme Labs."
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 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.
There, Acme is similar to Virtucon from the Austin Powers movies.
The cartoon series,
Loonatics Unleashed, is set in Acmetropolis.
Other cartoons
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.
- 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
Also in an episode of
Family Guy Wile E. Coyote returns an Acme slingshot for store credit at an Acme store supposedly run by the main character
Peter Griffin.
Bullwinkle J. Moose once disguised himself as an ACME Vacuum cleaner salesman in an episode of
The Bullwinkle Show.
Acme logo has also appeared on
The Good the Bad and the Ugly movie, stamped on the black powder boxes.
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.
Acme has appeared in
The Simpsons:
- 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 rat traps in the mall.
- In the episode entitled "The Day the Violence Died", Itchy uses Acme brand rollerskates.
Other appearances
The
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the
Perl programming language.
[1]
Parts of the Schwarzenegger movie
Last Action Hero feature Acme products in the film world.
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."
Acme also appeared in My name is Earl in an episode titled "Creative Writing".
External links
Business law
Business organizations
Basic forms:
Sole proprietorship
Corporation
Partnership
(General · Limited · LLP)
Cooperative
USA:
Business trust · LLC · LLLP
Delaware corporation
Nevada corporation
UK/Commonwealth:
Limited company
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Looney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theatres from 1930 to 1969. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and is Warner Bros. Animation's first animated theatrical series. The regular Warner Bros.
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Wile E. (Ethelbert) Coyote (also known simply as "The Coyote") and the Road Runner are cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, created by Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Brothers.
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Buddy is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons. Buddy has his origins in the chaos that followed the severing of relations between animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising from producer Leon Schlesinger.
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Conglomerate is the term used to describe a large company which consists of divisions of often seemingly unrelated businesses.
History
The English East India Company can be considered to be one of the earliest conglomerate groups; originally a trade enterprise established
..... Click the link for more information. A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym.
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Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history).
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Acme (Greek:
ακμή,
the peak, zenith, prime) denotes the best of something.
In contemporary culture and society it is used in diverse contexts:
..... Click the link for more information. Generic brands of consumer products (often supermarket goods) are distinguished by the absence of a brand name.
They may be manufactured by less prominent companies, or manufactured on the same production line as a 'named' brand.
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Sears, Roebuck and Company
Subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation
Founded 1886 (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Headquarters Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA
Industry Retail
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anvil is a manufacturing tool, made of a hard and massive block of stone or metal used as a support for chiseling and hammering other objects, such as in forging iron and steel items.
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Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., or Warner Bros. (pronounced Warner Brothers), is one of the world's largest producers of film and television entertainment.
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Wile E. (Ethelbert) Coyote (also known simply as "The Coyote") and the Road Runner are cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, created by Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Brothers.
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National Lampoon was an American humor magazine that began in 1970 as an offshoot of the Harvard Lampoon. It reached its height of popularity in the 1970s, but has had a far-reaching effect on American humor, spawning films, radio, live theatre and television
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Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr.]]
First appearance Life With Feathers ( March 24th 1945)
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Voiced by Mel Blanc
Bill Farmer (Space Jam)
Joe Alaskey (current), Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr.
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