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Rating the Super Bowl Commercials – February 1, 2009
By PopSavant | February 1, 2009 | 
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Hi all… like most of America, I just finished watching one of the best Super Bowls of all time. I’d picked the Steelers by two touchdowns… not quite, but since they eked out a 27-23 win over the Cardinals I was still on the right side.
But hey, this is a pop culture site. What about the commercials? Here’s my rundown. I’ve got four categories: Best, Decent, Fail, Worst, and perhaps most the most damnable of all – “Meh,” for commercials that weren’t worthy of notice one way or another. All-in-all, an average year. Some cute ones, but nothing for the ages. Note I did the movie ads as a separate post.
On with the ratings!
Best – These ads were the best of the bunch:
- Bridgestone – Hot Item (Jump Around) Astronauts have their moon buggy stripped by aliens, complete with a soundtrack courtesy of House of Pain. Funny and catchy.
- Budweiser – Horse Love / Horse Circus - Sappy, but beautiful.
- Careerbuilder.com – Tips – Signs you need a new job; woman screaming, guy in a blue speedo. My pick for the best ad of the night.
- Etrade – Talking Baby (Broken Wings) - just when we thought the talking baby thing was played out, they drop Mr. Mister on us.
- Miller High Life – One Second Commercials – It’ll never work again, and lets hope they don’t try. But for tonight? Simply perfect. HIGH LIFE!
- Pedigree – Crazy Pets - This one gets the nod for the old woman chasing the ostrich.
- Teleflora – Talking Flowers - Made a point that I’m not sure needed to be made to any thinking person – don’t send flowers in a box – but we’ve all wanted to say the things the flowers said.
Decent Ads – Not hall of fame stuff, but amusing enough to be worth note:
- Bud Light – Conan Swedish Commercial - How could this NOT be funny?
- Budweiser – Horse Fetch – dog fetches a stick, Clydesdale fetches a tree branch.
- Budweiser – Generations – A story of a Scottish horse immigrant. This one had a chance at greatness, but somehow missed.
- Cash4Gold – Ed McMahon and MC Hammer - Wonderful casting, funny script with McMahon selling his gold hip replacement. Suffers from being a bit of a depressing product, slapping people back to the reality of an economy that’s in the toilet during a couple hours when a lot of people were managing to forget.
- Cheetos – Bird Attack - Any commercial that suggests revenge on the loud person on the cell phone at the adjacent table is okay by me.
- Coke – Avatars -Aren’t we all starting to think of our friends as their online personas on some level?
- Conan – Funny people – “If your Conan lasts more than three hours, see a doctor.”
- Doritos – Power of the Crunch – Guy crunches Doritos and blows off a woman’s dress and makes an ATM spit out cash. Had a chance at the “best” category by they had to soften it up by showing the guy live after being hit by the bus at the end.
- Firestone -Mr. Potato Head - A classic icon in a situation we’ve all dreamed of.
- GE – Scarecrow – Any Wizard of Oz reference is okay with me. As this ad was telling us all about how GE will solve our energy needs, we’ll ignore the part in the original movie where a main character was jonesing for a can of oil.
- Hyundai – Angry Bosses – you can’t go wrong with people screaming in Japanese and German.
- NFL – Usama – Loved the part where Usama told his snow cone boss he didn’t want his crap job anyway.
- Pepsi – I’m Good – Life-threatening accidents from the America’s Funniest Home Videos school of comedy.
- Priceline – Shatner in the Van - Points off for it not being a fresh commercial, but hey… it’s Shatner. In a van.
Meh – Commercials that commit the sin of being completely forgettable
- Arbys – Goat Marriage – Whatever.
- Audi – Chase – a fun trip through the decades, but ultimately… who cares?
- Bud Light – Drinkability, Boss Flying Out The Window – Shrug.
- Bud Light Lime – Summer State of Mind – It’s a beer. With lime. If you used a fresh lime, it would be called Corona.
- Castrol – Edge Monkeys - Monkeys, cool, but this commercial was utterly lacking charm.
- Coca-Cola – Heist / Bugs – Nice Peter and the Wolf soundtrack, but this one said nothing.
- Denny’s – Thugs - Real mobsters don’t eat at places with sticky tables. Unless it’s from the blood.
- Doritos – Crystal Ball – Ooo, nutshot. Hilarious.
- GoDaddy.com – Danica Shower and Enhanced – Not to discourage companies from putting hot chicks on TV, but… yawn.
- Hardees Chicken Parm – It’s fast food.
- Monster – Fandemonium – ONLY remotely interesting because the prizes are cool.
- Monster.com – Moose Head - Remember when Monster had the must-watch commercial of the Super Bowl?
- NBC – LMAO – actually, NBC does have the funniest network sitcoms right now, but…
- Pepsi – Anthem / Forever Young - Pepsi continues to have a better ad agency than Coke. I can’t say the same about the product.
- Sprint – Roadies – this would have been a category higher if it hadn’t been all over TV during the weeks leading up to the SB, but the shot of the plane taking off with the fireworks is money.
- Taco Bell – Overrated – Taco Bell makes a decent late night fast food burrito, and they should stick to that message. Attempts to make it look sexy or romantic or upscale will always, always, fail.
- Vizio – Take A Look - Maybe when I stop seeing ads about the DTV transition I’ll detox and suddenly care about consumer electronics again.
Fail – These commercials were just bad:
- Avon - Why? Why?
- Budweiser – Drinkability / Guy Drawing in the Air - Completely uninteresting and unfunny.
- Cars.com – David Abernathy, Boy Genius – The unlikable boy genius freezes up when buying a car.
- Coke Zero – Mean Troy – All right, I’m probably the only person in the country who will rate this a failure. It’s obviously a play on the old Mean Joe Greene commercial, but that one was poingnant and heartwarming. Coke had a chance to do a meaningful update, but instead went for cynicism and slapstick. It was completely unworthy of the original.
- Gatorade – Tiger/That’s G – perhaps the most innane slogan/promo in recent memory. Perhaps the “G” stands for “garbage.”
- H&R Block – Death and Taxes - just not very interesting.
- Heroes – Football people – Probably looked good on paper. How much do you want to bet none of the football guys have seen the show?
- Kelloggs Frosted Frakes – Plant A Seed - one of those here’s-how-spiffy-corporate-America is things. Maybe building athletic fields will help American kids exercise off all those high fructose corn syrup calories.
- Leno – Driving. – Actually, Leno is a car guy, so the imagery was nice. But if you didn’t already know about Jay’s time slot move, did this commercial clue you in?
- NFL Network – Football Season Never Ends (Darren McFadden) - A pale imitation of the Ladanian/Polomalu commercial that ran during the season.
- Pepsi – Pepsuber – the Macgruber SNL skits were funny until now. They premiered the Pepsi sell-out angle on last night’s episode, and it was funny because it represented the sleazy practice of product placement. Now that it turned into nothing more than a sellout itself… I like Will Forte, but he should be ashamed of himself.
- Sobe – Lizard Lake 2D/3D – Timberlake’s SNL sketch with Beyonce did this, and much better.
- Toyota Camry - completely uninteresting.
- Toyota Tundra – Killer Heat – notably mostly for the use of the word “tranny” twice.
Worst: These commercials managed to sink below all the other offerings:
- Toyota Venza – Faces – Big budget and utterly forgettable.
- Overstock – Bling and Boozer – A person of marginal celebrity at best coupled with a dot com holdover that’s mostly an afterthought. Who cares?
There’s my take. What did you think? Comment below.
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