While riding my bike recently, I passed a construction site where a new house is being built. At the entrance to the project was a row of orange barrels with the words “Acme Barricades” written on them.

And I thought, “Acme barricades? Wile E. Coyote must have built this house.” Because to a boy like me who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, Acme can only mean one thing: the Acme catalog from which Coyote ordered every imaginable device he could use to outsmart Roadrunner – devices that failed spectacularly every time.

In the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, many companies used the name Acme. It was a good name because “acme” is the Greek word for “peak, summit, or pinnacle” and means that your company is first-rate or better than everyone else. And it didn’t hurt that it appeared alphabetically at the top of the list in the phone book.

And yet, I thought, aside from the orange barricade this morning, when was the last time I saw a product with the Acme name on it? Do any companies still call themselves Acme these days?

With my head spinning in circles of nonsensical logic, I decided to do some research on Acme as soon as I got home. After all, that’s the main purpose of my morning bike rides – to trick my brain into following an absurd, meaningless train of thought that isn’t worth your following. You probably have better things to do with your time, so I’m going to dive down that rabbit hole of ridiculousness and then report back to you.

You’re welcome.

And so, at home, I raided the rarely opened bottom kitchen cupboard where I kept printed phone books (remember?) from when I still had a real landline phone (remember?).

Sure enough, there was an old Yellow Pages phone book from 2018, certainly the last one I was ever sent. I was a bit surprised that I even had it, because I’m sure I hadn’t opened a phone book for at least a decade before this one arrived.

So I got to work, searching the Yellow Pages for Acme businesses, from air conditioning and appliances to flooring materials and florists, pest control, plumbing and more.

And I didn’t find a single company called Acme in the entire book.

But why? How could one of the most famous company names of a century ago – with products as diverse as whistles, anvils and traffic lights – be virtually on the brink of extinction?

The answer must surely be Wile E. Coyote, who ordered exclusively from the Acme catalog when he ordered a device that would outsmart the Roadrunner. These shorts began in late 1949 and became increasingly popular in the decades that followed.

The list of Acme products ordered by Coyote was almost endless:

Acme dynamite.

Acme axle grease.

Giant rubber bands from Acme.

All of them were a complete failure in Coyote’s war against Roadrunner and only served to harm Coyote. And yet he continued to dig deeper into the Acme catalog:

Rocket-powered roller skates from Acme.

Dried boulders of Acme.

Acme jet-powered pogo stick.

All failures.

And little by little, year after year, as Coyote failed with one Acme product after another, the list of actual Acme companies in the Yellow Pages got shorter and shorter.

And today, according to my extensive research while looking through the Yellow Pages of a 2018 phone book, the Acme company name is virtually out of business—at least in my area covered by this neighborhood phone book.

But why stop there? To take things a step further, I asked Mama Google to see if Acme existed somewhere in the non-paper Twittersphere.

You’re welcome.

I found ACME Foods, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1891 and became a full-line supermarket in 1937, decades before Coyote’s Acme catalog appeared. The name stuck around for most of the 20th century — at least until it was bought by Albertson’s, which was later acquired by Kroger. Acme grocery stores? Mostly gone now.

And then there was Acme Tools, founded in 1948 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, a year before the first Roadrunner movie was filmed – but with a mascot wearing a hard hat in its logo that was suspiciously reminiscent of an unkempt coyote wearing sunglasses.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” You can reach him at [email protected].