I’ve always hated the people who say they only watch the Super Bowl “for the commercials.” Not everyone cares about sports, sure, but nobody in their sane mind can sit through three-hours plus of sports just to see a beer commercial where a guy gets hit in the nuts. These types just want attention, playing the “oh look at me, I’m so cool I’m watching something I hate” card.
Yet, for the first time in…forever…I’m not pumped for the Super Bowl. Sure, the New England Patriots could make NFL history if they win, but rooting for the Patriots at this point is like rooting for a barracuda squaring off against a goldfish. Plus, nobody outside New England wants to see yet another Boston-based sports franchise achieve glory. But the big-time underdogs the New York Giants don’t jump out as rootable either – cheering for NYC sports team never feels right, and it’s tough to support a team helmed by a class-A crybaby. Plus, they beat the Packers, and I just can’t support that.
So, I’m going into Super Bowl XLII lukewarm about the game, focusing only on the advertisements, like all those jerks. The kicker…I think the commercials will stink too. Good Super Bowl ads are the thing of the past, and nowadays a guest spot by Carlos Mencia or Cedric the Entertainer constitutes “funny” in the eyes of ad execs. Plus, the advent of YouTube means most of the ads have already leaked, taking a lot of fun away from breaks in the game (I’ve avoided all commercials up to this point).
I may sound pretty down on Super Sunday, but I’m an optimist at heart, and hope that, over the course of the night, an ad will come out of nowhere and win my heart like Garmin’s giant-monster ad last year did. Lets just hope Mr. Mencia is nowhere to be found tonight.
Commercial Time!
5:20 – Jordin Sparks sings a pretty solid Star-Spangled Banner, and now I think the new commercials start. Or, I might be wrong, as things start with a spot for an Owen Wilson film. OK, may have jumped the gun here.
5:26 – The coin toss! That means new commercials, right? A House ad. Can’t they start the ads already?
5:35 – First commercials! A Bud Light ad, claiming the brew can make you breathe fire. Pretty lame, and definitely doens’t make me want to drink beer. Next, something spoofing The Godfather. What’s going to be in his bed, a horse head? Nope, part of a car. So cars go around killing cars. Cool looking car, but lame commercial, especially given the good set-up. Two down, and not a good start for the TV spots.
5:45 – Joe Buck and Troy Aikman followed by, I called it, a bad 80’s song. Everyone is sleepy. Basically people fall asleep, and their heads bob like the assholes from Night at the Roxbury. An ad for Pepsi Max. Funny stuff, but the song ruins the ad. The more I think about it, the less I like the ad, though the guy getting hit by a kid in a swing rocked. Next, a Salesgenie.com ad. How did this get on so early? An animated spot where….nothing happens. Seriously. The next spot, an ad for Bud Light, involves hiding beer in various objects. Bud Light’s done this before, and much better in the past. We get a generic Under Armor spot next, involving football players doing Citizen Kane-like motivational speeches. Ummm, these get better later, right?
5:58 – The teams in the game are playing so well that America isn’t getting as many ads as usual. The first quarter is almost over, and we only had six ads. And none were very strong. BTW, you can apparently watch all the ads on this MySpace page, though I don’t see how to do it. End of first quarter, more ads. A squirrel, so cute. A bunch of animals scream, because they think the fuzzy fellow is going to die. But the car turns well, so all is saved. OK ad, but I totally don’t know which company put it out. Doritos promotes some unknown musician. And Fox promotes a show where a guy licks ice cream off a baby’s head. Creepy.
6:02 – My internet starts acting up, meaning I just lost a bunch of stuff I wrote about an ad for some stupid Angelina Jolie movie and…I don’t even remember. GoDaddy.com’s ad started off fine with some jokes about people only watching the game for the ads (so meta), but ended with Danica Patrick stripping or something. Didn’t need to see that.
6:05 - Early frontrunner for ad of the night – Fed-Ex’s spot featuring giant pigeons going Cloverfield on a city street. Very funny (hard to root against biggie-sized pigeons stepping on cars), even if the pigeons were actually robots or something. That winner is followed by something about a “circle of death” which I totally missed, but certainly didn’t care about. The pigeon ad definitely gets big props though.
6:13 – Horses! Budweiser, what do you have in store. A horse doesn’t make the cut to pull the beer cart. Cue Rocky montage showing said steed training to get better. Animals always rock, but this seems a bit too feel-goody to be serious. Cute animals though, can’t hate that too much. But give me a joke. The new Iron Man movie…that looks pretty sweet.
6:18 – An ad for the new Corola. Involving badgers. That rip off your skin. A bit too random, but kinda cute. Uh oh, the new Garmin ad, they won it all last year. This year…a car driven by Napoleon. The joke is without Garmin, he can’t see the road. Wow, I loved Garmin last year and hoped this year’s spot would establish them as a permanet player. But that’s not the ad to do it with. A bit to involved (a history joke? really?) with no good payoff. Great song though.
6:23 – A lady’s heart just burst from her chest. What the hell is this. It’s an ad for CareerBuilder.com, urging us to “follow our hearts.” Worst ad of the night so far. Until an ad featuring CGI lizards doing the Thriller dance come on screen hocking Life Water. A stupid 80’s reference and no point, this one has all the elements of crap needed to be the bottom of the bottom. I’m stunned the worst ads of the night just played back-to-back.
6:28 – An animated spot featuring a muscle man pushing a boulder up a mountain while ambient music plays. Sounds like it could be a Radiohead C-side. Turns out this is an ad for a hybrid car. Very weak, and I guess it represented the environment and how we can save it. OH SHIT CARLOS MENCIA AND HIS CAVALCADE OF STEREOTYPES. Black people talk like this, Asians talk like this. I’m scared that these character could become a Super Bowl staple, as there are just enough racist malcontents out there to find this funny. For the rest of us, these are an insult to equality and humor. So bad.
Time Unknow – Liveblog from hell. My wireless cuts out, leaving me without any hope of keeping this thing updated during the last few minutes of the second quarter. And then I spill Diet Coke Lime on my computer, and the thing isn’t working at all. I’m really, really stressed out now, and Tom Petty’s “Freefallin” isn’t helping me. Here are the ads you missed while I was watching my life break down.
- Ugly girl rubs Planter’s peanuts on herself, and all the dudes want to tap that fugly face. Funny in a dumb way, but a definite stand out tonight.
- Dwayne Wade and Charles Barkely. Notihng new here (spots featuring the two have been running for a while now), but this one’s good, I like the idea of Sir Charles stalking D-Wade. The line “Do you like popsicles” got me to smile at least.
- Justin Timberlake gets hit in the groin. Twice. Not so strong.
- A man baits a trap with Doritos. A giant mouse jumps out the wall and starts wailing on him. Meh.
An OK crop, but nothing amazing. Winner probably the Planters ad, which isn’t saying much. Tom Petty just finished, and I honestly just remembered he was performing. So old.
7:17 - Special mention here to an ad featuring the Geico Cavemen. They are making fun of the wreck that was the Cavemen TV show. Did…did Geico just blow my mind? I may need a minute to regain myself from an ad attacking the stupidest show of the last quarter century.
7:20 - Another special note – the FOX promo for the second half just used Arcade Fire’s “No Cars Go.” It’s official — Arcade Fire have made it big.
7:30 - Cars.com advertisement. A guy threatens to use a witch doctor on some guy if he doesn’t get a car. Very unexciting stuff, a theme running rampant here tonight, as the people behind these ads seem content to show something wacky but not do anything about it. Yikes, a stereotypical panda. Talking about how they need a better business plan. Salesgenie.com got two ads tonight? Two terrible ads, at that. Shaq riding a horse. Oh dear, I love this. He looks really weird compared to the rest of the tiny jockeys, and he wins because he’s tall. Vitamin Water, good work, you got laughs out of a really annoyed kid right now.
7:34 - Bud Light using cavemen. Dangerous ground. The cavefolk invent the wheel to carry Bud Light more efficiently. Doesn’t work well. Nothing great, but the end gag was better than most. Another car commercial featuring cars having to dodge animals. Except Richard Simmons appears, and the driver hesitates as to whether he should run over the fitness celebrity or not. Hey, good ads are starting to appear! And then we get another Careerbuilder.com ad featuring a magical cricket being eaten by a spider. I can’t trust them after they made me watch a woman’s heart shatter through her breast.
7:43 - What a weird game. Oh, I’ll ramble more on that in a sec, ads. Rich folk car driving on a road. Meta, because the narrarator talks about the typical Super Bowl ad structure. The twist? This is a Hyundai. Whatever. Wall-E, the new Pixar movie, looks pretty bitchin’ in my humble opinion. I don’t care that the ad they just showed made no sense. And, to go back to what I was saying, this game is both good (it’s close) but also bad (neither team looks that swell). Kind of like the TV spots, a little. I honestly don’t know which spot will take the top spot at this point.
7:51 - Getting really fed up with this game, though it might just be my state of mind following the death of my computer. An ad for Jumper, who cares. Uh oh, a talking baby talking into a webcam. He’s talking about stocks, and showing how easy it is. Has Baby Bob taught you nothing E-Trade? Another Bud Light featuring a weird ability being granted to the drinker. The drink can make you fly, and some guy gets sucked up by a jumbo jet turbine. Ehhhhh, what? Oh look, he’s OK, I guess whirling blades of death wouldn’t cut him to ribbons. Yes, I’m angry at the logic in a Super Bowl ad, sue me.
7:55 - Also, want to note if the Giants keep getting this kind of fierce pressure on Tom Brady, they’ll win. The Patriots look ugly right now, and I’m wondering how they stayed undefeated.
8:01 - A very cute ad about a player who plays the oboe. Nice, very harmless. I feel all the good ads stopped running. Especially because I’ve seen this U.S. Cellular ad before. An ad for hair-care product showing famous people and their hair. Forgettable beyond belief. Coca-Cola usually have good stuff. But this year, they have a spot featuring a Macy’s Day Parade float of Underdog and Stewie from Family Guy fighting for an inflatible bottle of coke. And who wins! Charlie Brown. Points for giving Peanuts the nod over…crap…but still strange stuff. Still, I love Charlie Brown, I kind of relate to him. Good grief.
8:12 - Democrats vs. Republicans, featuring James Carville and Bill Frist. The two buy Coke, and start hanging out together, and become bros. Ahhh, kind of heartwarming, much better than the other Coca-Cola spot. If only James Carville pulled the football away from Mr. Frist as he tried to kick it. Then we’d be in business.
8:14 - Movie ad for the new Adam Sandler movie, where he is a super spy. Or something involving him parading around in his underwear. I know that’s going to make way too much money at the box office. The ads definitely hitting a smaller waves now, but I still haven’t seen an Emerald Nuts commercial. Those spots usually rock.
8:20 - Another ad featuring that E-Trade talking baby. I don’t believe two of these exist. Taco Bell up next. Featuring a mariachi band playing for people as they eat the new Fiesta Platter. That platter looked really good. Next spot – a dog drinking water from a bowl. And that’s the only thing being featured. It’s for Gatorade, and it sucks because I don’t get it. Another ad for House, but props for using Sia’s amazing “Breathe Me” in the promo. Love that song.
8:26 - Game getting intense, commercials getting lame. A spot featuring Will Ferrell acting like a Will Ferrell character while talking about Bud Light. Odd cross promotion for his upcoming film about basketball. You’ve seen one Will Ferrell movie, you’ve seen them all.
8:36 - The game itself got really good. I’m actually enjoying this game now. I’m also trying to figure out which commercials was best, which is a daunting task.
8:41 - Patriots in front now. Wooo, solid game, can Eli “pouty pout out face” Manning guide them to victory? Oh, they aren’t going to commercials. I think that means they’ve run out of new ones.
8:44 - Victoria’s Secret wants to remind us we should have sex with women we will never actually meet. Screw you Victoria’s Secret. And…an Amp energy drink commercial where a fat guy dances to Salt n’ Peppa. No more awkward dancing, please.
8:56 - Holy shit, Giants take the lead. This game is off the chain now. Forget the ads.
9:03 - Oh my god, the New York Giants just won the Super Bowl. Wow wow wow.
So……that was an incredible ending to a crazy game. I’m pretty stunned, what an upset. Eli Manning just won the Super Bowl. Geez, I don’t believe this. OK…back to the ads.
Top 5 Ads
5. Bridgestone – Car almost hits Richard Simmons. Just edges out the Coke ad with the big balloons, mainly becasue this one didn’t feature Stewie Griffin alongside an American hero like Charlie Brown.
4. Planters – Ugly girl rubs peanuts onself, becomes hot. Amazingly stupid, but funny nonetheless.
3. Coca-Cola – James Carville and Bill Frist become best buds after buying Coke. I usually hate politics, but this one made me smile, and also made me thirsty. Even though I had just spilled Coke on my computer, crippling it for the rest of the night. Ahhhhhhhhh.
2. Vitamin Water – Shaq rides a horse. Combining the image of Shaq riding a tiny horse with him racing tiny jockeys guarantees big laughs. Shaq just makes me laugh, I don’t know why.
1. Fed-EX – Carrier pigeons ruin a city’s shit. The only truly memorable ad from the night, simply because big birds terrorized a city. Tonight’s ads featured a lot of cute animals but never really used them in any interesting way. This one though, rocked, and, from a very weak field, is definitely the one I remember most.
Bottom 5 Ads (Very hard, since this was a very, very weak year for the ads)
5. Careerbuilder.com – A lady’s heart jumps out of her. Kinda gross, actually, caused a lot of people I was watching with to recoil.
4. E-Trade – Talking baby buys stocks. Talking infants never, ever work, and combining them with the thrilling sport of buying stocks doesn’t make things better.
3. Bud Light – Carlos Mencia. I’ll say nothing else.
2. Salesgenie.com – Two terrible animated ads, one featuring a kinda-racist panda. Along with the above, this was a very mean spirted Super Bowl, and that was before Bill Bellicheck walked off the field early.
1. SoBE Life Water – Lizards dancing to Thriller. Sums up the night pretty well – semi-cute animals do something stupid for no reason. Throw in an 80’s reference and make it a little too long and you have the recipe for the worst advertisement of the night. And that’s saying something in a group that featured a talking infant and Carlos Mencia.
Biggest Dissapointment – Garmin. Not a bad ad, per se, but a big drop-off from last year’s ad of the game. I’m just let down is all.
Most Missed – Where was Emerald Nuts?
OK, I’m going to wrap my mind around the fact Eli Manning is Super Bowl MVP. Holy crap.