The Road Runner and Coyote cartoons have endured since 1949, when legendary director Chuck Jones and storyman Michael Maltese created Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner for the Warner Brothers cartoon short "Fast and Furry-Ous." The cartoon established a formula that has continued to entertain audiences for half a century. The hungry Coyote ("Carnivorous Vulgaris") chases the truly wily Road Runner ("Accelleratii Incredibus") across the desert southwest. In escalating frustration, the Coyote resorts to using a boomerang, a rocket, a boulder, jet-propelled tennis shoes, and the first in a long line of Acme products doomed to failure, the Acme Super Outfit. Each scheme backfires, leaving the Coyote on the wrong end of a boulder, falling off a cliff, or simply exploding.

As Jones recalled in Chuck Reducks, studio management, fearful that no one would like the cartoon duo...