Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote

Wile E. 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. more...

Home
Action Figures
Animation Art, Characters
Animation Art
Animation Characters
Betty Boop
Bags, Cases
Boxes
Figures
Jewelry, Watches
Other
Pins
Signs
Casper The Ghost
Curious George
Dr. Seuss
Felix the Cat
Garfield
Ghostbusters
Hanna-Barbera
Other Hanna-Barbera
Scooby-Doo
The Flintstones
Hello Kitty
King Features
Muppets
Other Animation Characters
Peanuts
Cups, Mugs
Figurines
Other
Pins
Plush Items
Pink Panther
Popeye
Rocky & Bullwinkle
Sesame Street
Shrek
Smurfs
South Park
SpongeBob SquarePants
The Simpsons
Tom & Jerry
Walter Lantz/Woody...
Warner Bros.
Bugs Bunny
Daffy Duck
Marvin the Martian
Other Warner Bros. Items
Pepe Le Pew
Porky Pig
Powerpuff Girls
Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote
Sylvester
Tasmanian Devil
Tweety
Ziggy
Japanese, Anime
Apparel & Accessories
Bronze Age (1970-79)
Collections
Comics
Figurines
Full Runs
Golden Age (1938-55)
Graphic Novels, TPBs
International
Magazines
Modern Age (1980-Now)
Newspaper Comics
Original Comic Art
Other Comics
Platinum Age (1897-1937)
Posters
Silver Age (1956-69)
Supplies

Chuck Jones based the films on a Mark Twain book called Roughing It, in which Twain noted that coyotes are starving and hungry and would chase a roadrunner.

Chuck Jones once said of his most famous protagonist and antagonist that "Wile E. is my reality, Bugs Bunny is my goal." He originally created the Road Runner cartoons as a parody of traditional "cat and mouse" cartoons (such as Tom and Jerry) which were increasingly popular at the time. The major difference is that the audience's sympathy is drawn to Wile E., a comically ineffectual predator whose hunts always end in disaster. The cartoons' Southwestern setting also mirrors the setting of the Krazy Kat comics, by George Herriman.

Premise

The Road Runner shorts are very simple in their premise: the Road Runner, a flightless cartoon bird (loosely based on a real bird, the Greater Roadrunner), is chased down the highways of the Southwestern United States by a hungry coyote, named Wile E. Coyote (a pun on "wily coyote"). Despite numerous clever attempts, the coyote never catches or kills the Road Runner. (Although The Solid Tin Coyote does nab the roadrunner, he throws the coyote into his cavernous mouth following the "EAT, STUPID" command, and in Soup or Sonic, after running in and out of pipes that would magically resize the pair, the coyote is getting ready to eat the Road Runner, when he suddenly realizes that he is miniature and his prey is gigantic, to which he then looks at the camera and holds up the signs "All right, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him - now what do I do?") All of his elaborate schemes end up injuring him in humorous instances of highly exaggerated cartoon slapstick violence.

There is almost never any "spoken" communication, save the Road Runner's "beep-beep" (which actually sounds more like "mheep-mheep") and the Road Runner sticking out his tongue (which sounds like someone patting the opening of a glass bottle with the palm of their hand - which is essentially how sound effects expert Treg Brown did it), but the two characters do sometimes communicate by holding up signs to each other, the audience, or the cartoonist. Wile E. Coyote has also shouted from pain on at least one occasion. Another key element is that while Wile E. is the aggressor in the series, he and his hopelessly futile efforts are the focus of the audience's sympathy as well as virtually all of the humor. Wile E. seems doomed, like Sisyphus, forever to try but never to succeed.

The Road Runner's personality is less developed and consequently the audience lacks a context for empathy or identification with him - he is cheeky and seems to show satisfaction in defying the schemes of the Coyote, but the majority of the time is just a running object in the distance.

Read more at Wikipedia.org