The Five Best Super Bowl Commercials
By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Seriously Random Lists | Comments (48)
Overall, it was a fairly weak night for Super Bowl commercials — I have no idea why some of these corporations would spend $3 million per 30-second spot to, say, humiliate Charles Barkley, KISS, or the 1986 Chicago Bears. Most of the commercials that weren’t downright lame were excruciatingly embarrassing. And what was up with all the Manly Man commercials? Maybe I could understand the sexist bullshit for a normal Sunday lineup of football, but this was the biggest television event of the year. And hey! Guess what! Women watch the Super Bowl. And now you’ve alienated them. Congratulations, dumbasses.
Doritos, however, did have a pretty good night — they had three or four ads, and they were all better than average. Meanwhile, Budweiser — which must have spent $30 million last night, easily — completely struck out, save for the kind of OK human bridge spot (and that Clydesdale commercial? I think it’s time to retire that series). The GoDaddy commercials were, as usual, kind of offensive and completely pointless in terms of selling their product (though, let’s admit that, thanks to their yearly SB ads, GoDaddy is the only game in town — I don’t even know where else you can buy domain names). E*Trade and their goddamn talking babies were fairly ineffective, and the big controversial spot of the night — the Focus on Family one with Tim Tebow — didn’t even mention the word abortion. So much for controversy. The Simpsons Coke commercial was weak; pulling the Griswolds back onto the small screen was a failure for Home Away; the Monster Beaver was sad; and I didn’t even understand the Denny’s Grand Slam commercials — why spend $10 or $12 million to advertise that you’re giving away some bad diner eggs — nobody is going to leave that experience anything but still hungry and they’ll smell like burnt caterpillars, which is the aroma of Dennys.
I did love the number one commercial, though, which was really just a CBS promo. That was good stuff, and the number five spot wasn’t particularly funny or anything, but it was, I thought, the most effective spot of the night, in that it captured our attention and demonstrated the product. That 60-second spot should do a lot of damage to Bing’s ability to gain a foothold in the search market.
5. The Google Commercial
4. Betty White Snickers Commercial
3. Bridgestone Bachelor Party Commercial
2. Doritos: Underdog
1. Dave Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, & Jay Leno Promo
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Comments
Posted by: courtney at February 8, 2010 9:15 AM
i can't think of a single commercial that was decent this year.
hey, can we do something about the incredibly annoying werewolf pop-up. every single time i switch screens....