Wile E. Coyote

Wile E. Coyote is best known for appearing in the Road Runner cartoons, in which he chases but never manages to catch the Road Runner, a flightless, gormless looking bird. The cartoons were first shown in the 1940s, and in his attempts to catch and kill the Road Runner, Wile E. regularly injures himself in rather violent ways, which is highly amusing.

He is always hungry and desperate to catch the Road Runner, which leads to sympathy for his character when he is constantly unsuccessful in his attempts and is forever destined to fail.

Wile E. never speaks but communicates in the cartoons by sticking out his tongue or through writing signs. He also acquires numerous weird and wonderful devices from the fictional Acme Corporation to help him in his pursuits. The devices usually backfire on him, and he often ends up burnt to a crisp or squashed flat as a pancake at the bottom of a cliff.

Wile E. was in the Looney Tunes comic books, where he was renamed Kelsey Coyote. He later appeared in some Bugs Bunny shorts in the 1960s, where he talks. He has also appeared in the Little Beeper cartoons which featured on Tiny Toon Adventures, and he starred in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action in 2003.

The Road Runner cartoons were reshown in the 1990s and early 2000s on Cartoon Network and Boomerang before being released on DVD. Wile E. has also been in several adverts, including one for Honey Nut Cheerios in the 1980s where he was saved from falling off a cliff by the Honey Nut Cheerios bee, and one for Pepsi in 1996 where he appeared alongside footballer Deion Sanders.