The word acme means highest level, or top of the line, similar to apex.

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 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. Acme is often used whenever a cartoon, film or similar needs a corporation for a product, and instead of using an existing company name (perhaps leading to trademark issues) or making one up, they simply use Acme.

Primarily, the name "Acme" is widely known by the public to be an acronym of 'American Company that Makes Everything', which reflects the idea that cartoon characters always turn to the Acme Corporation because they manufacture the most unusual, odd and obscure products that might be needed in the most unlikely situations. It is also a useful device that cartoon directors use to give a product the real-world convention of having been manufactured by a company with a brand without having to deal with trademark issues.

A more obscure origin of the name "Acme" is a homage to the peg bar system that animators use to align their drawings. All animation paper has special holes cut into it and a special set of pegs that hold the paper in place. The company that made the original pegbar and hole puncher used to make the holes in the animation paper was called Acme.

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.

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.

The name also helped to derive the famous equation E=mc2 as the 2 forms an A in the beginning of ACME. This has been seen in one of the Animaniacs episodes where Einstein is met and he finds the equation from the word ACME with the help of the Warner Brothers. 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 Ace or Acme (some of these still survive); the Acme 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.

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 New Yorker 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. 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. The company's trade would appear to extend to the intergalactic level, given Marvin the Martian's use of the Acme Strait-Jacket Ejecting Bazooka in The Hasty Hare; however, in Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Marvin utilizes tools from the rival "A-1" brand, leaving the Acme products to Daffy Duck.

In the Donald Duck cartoons sometimes on the kitchen ware, gas stations, and tools are branded Acme.

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".

During a bumper on "Cartoon Network"'s The Acme Hour the company motto/slogan is "Acme, We add rockets to Everything."

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 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 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 used extensively by Gary Larson in his comic The Far Side as a generic trademark attached to all kinds of companies and products.

In Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, the words "Acme" can be seen on the sides of various objects seen in Calvin's home and on the boxes he plays with. Acme is even mentioned by Calvin when referring to himself as the "Acme of Evolution," to which Hobbes replies "Oh please."

In the first episode of The Racoons, there is a bell with the Acme name on it.

Bullwinkle J. Moose once disguised himself as an Acme vacuum cleaner salesman in an episode of The Bullwinkle Show.

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 giant rat traps in the mall.
In the episode entitled "The Day the Violence Died", Itchy uses Acme brand rollerskates.

Acme appeared in The Fairly Oddparents episode "A New Squid In Town" as a "belt" from the character Mark Chang.

A few times in the Garfield and Friends cartoons.

A few times in the in the Pink Panther cartoon series.

In the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut animated movie, the electric chairs that were used to execute Terrence and Phillip are delivered in an Acme box.

In Chapter VIII of Watchmen, the elder Silk Spectre is seen receiving a pedicure from a woman seemingly employed by "Acme Manicure."

1937 - In A Star Is Born (1937), Vickie practices her lines: "Acme Trucking Company. No, Mr. Smith isn't in."

1938 - 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.

1946 - The 1946 film The Big Sleep contains a scene where Humphrey Bogart enters a book store named simply "Acme Books".

1952 - In an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ethel work in a candy factory, named the Acme Candy Factory.

1957 - In the Leave It to Beaver episode "The Perfume Salesmen," the Beaver and Wally endeavor to sell perfume manufactured by "Mason Acme Products."

1960s - Acme is the brand of fuel sold at Wally's Filling station in the 1960s CBS Television Network series The Andy Griffith Show.

1968 - The Acme logo has appeared in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, stamped on the black powder boxes.

1975 - The British television show The Goodies featured the Acme Giant Soup-Can Flipper in the Season 5 episode "Clown Virus".

1975 - The film Return Of The Pink Panther shows Clouseau crashing a red van into a swimming pool. The van, obtained as a ruse to get to the owner of a different swimming pool, has the words 'Acme Pool Service' written on its side.

1980 - The Professionals - It's Only a Beautiful Picture. A cream van with ACME Drilling is hijacked by robbers.

b 1983 - In the Monty Python's sketch The Crimson Permanent Assurance, Acme appears written on the building's sail and Acme Construction Company appears as subsidiary of the Very Big Corporation Of America.

1989 - James Bond "Licence To Kill": The equipment in the warehouse (used as a shelter by the drug lord Sanchez) in Key West reads ACME on it.

1991 - 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.

1993 - Parts of the Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero feature Acme products in the film world.

1994 - 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.

1996 - Near the end of the movie Spy Hard, the rocket launched has ACME printed on the side vertically.

1999 - In the fourth episode in Season 3 of The Sopranos, an Acme cola company had a vending machine in Dr. Melfi's dream.

2007 - Acme appeared in My Name Is Earl in an episode titled "Creative Writing".

2008 - In the Wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson works at the ACME supermarket.

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 computer game featured Acme bricks which fall upon the player, causing a loss of health points.

In Team Fortress 2, Acme appears on buildings in a train yard.

In Joint Strike Fighter (video game), "Acme Nuclear" appears on the façade of a nuclear power-plant, in the Kola Peninsula campaign.

ACME LAB is a short name of John Bargh's psychological lab at Yale University. The ACME LAB [– 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.

In Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion the radio private eye Guy Noir says he works on the "twelfth floor of the Acme building"

During the Adventures in Odyssey episode "The Great Wishy Woz: Part 2" when Mystic Mountain Lion visits the temple of enlightenment looking for a candle to take back to the Great Wishy Woz, "Lulu the Guru" instead gives him an "Acme Deluxe 5000 Flamethrower."

In Five for Fighting's song "World," they reference a product called "A.C.M.E's Build-a-World-to-Be" with the subtitle, "Take a chance, grab a piece."

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.

[edit] Other 1990 - 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, Burmbese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands."

The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network provides an "Acme::" namespace which contains many humorous, useless and abstract modules for the Perl programming language.