Well it’s time once again to give my play by play of the Super Bowl…commercials. I love commercials! And not just ones on the Super Bowl, they fascinate me on regular TV, too. Always have. When I was a kid, the Christmas commercials they played during the Macy’s Parade always put me in the spirit. And the only reason why I watched that dumb American Gladiators show back in the 90’s was because it was sponsored by Nintendo, and I wanted to see the newest SNES ads. So let’s see what commercials I liked at this year’s game!

Now, I know that I could’ve just skipped the Super Bowl and just watched the ads on the Internet. But where’s the fun in that? Even though I’m not the biggest football fan in the world, and didn’t care much for the two teams this year, it’s still a good and exciting game to watch usually. I didn’t really know who to root for this year. Maybe the Patriots since my dad went to high school with someone who played for the Patriots once. But they lost so oh well. I just rooted for puppies.

Puppies? Yeah, that’s right. Another Super Bowl tradition of mine is watching the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. That cable channel had a brilliant idea with this. They take a defeatist attitude and decide that nobody is going to watch their channel on Super Bowl Sunday, and so they just let a bunch of puppies loose on a mock football field to play and romp around. It’s so cute and I watch it every year. Well, bits and pieces of it anyway. I love how they keep adding to it every year. We have the kitten half time show, hamster blimp, dog tailgaters, pig cheerleaders, and this year’s new thing was a bird who commented on the game via Twitter! I think it’s all hilarious and I’m probably the only one who likes it.

I also just love how we treat Super Bowl Sunday like it’s a national holiday. Oh yeah, I didn’t watch crazy Madonna at half time, I just went to the potty and folded some clothes. But at least it’s fun and gives me a chance to eat some yummy snacks, like sausage and cheese, burgers, pizza sticks, and strawberries for dessert! Yum! All this and some funny commercials! So let’s take a look:

There were LOTS of NFL ads, car commercials, and ads about cell phones, Hulu, and other technology things. As well as movie previews and beer commercials. But I’ll only list the ones that caught my eye.

Cars

I think I saw more car commercials at this Super Bowl than any other product. Normally I don’t pay attention to car commercials since I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth and can’t drive a car. So I’m not in the market for one. But there were some funny car commercials here. Why can’t they all be like these?

Since I don’t like vampires, one of my favorites was the one with the vampire party, and one of them drives up and accidentally kills them all with his bright headlights on his car! That’s the car the Belmonts would drive I bet. Another funny one was the Cheetah car race, except the cheetah went after the guy who opened his cage!

Another one had cars that survived the apocalypse. And while it wasn’t exactly about a car, Bridgestone had some commercials about putting tire material on footballs and basketballs, with funny results! And let’s not forget the one where the graduate thinks he’s getting a car as a present instead of a mini-fridge (we got a mini-fridge in our dorm for free when I was in college). And then the cars that could do crazy stunts, and they had the gall to put “do not attempt” on the ad. Like anyone would think those cars could do those things! I’m surprised they didn’t pull that “do not attempt” stunt with a later car ad where a guy saves his dying boss’ life in the passenger seat by stopping and starting the car over and over.

One funny car ad started out with an overweight dog working out so he could fit through the doggy door so he could ride in the car. But then it changed to the Star Wars guys at the cantina and they said they liked that better than the kid Darth Vader car ad from last year. And one of them gets choked by the Force, and you see the kid Vader leave the bar! Cars.com had a creepy puppet coming out of a guy’s back telling him to buy a car.

One car commercial that got my attention for some reason was this guy who saw a pretty girl bending down, and then she walked over to him and starting whispering in his ear in another language, tugging on his tie, sticking her finger in his latte, and basically being like Ulala at E3. And then she turned into one of those dinky cars that I could probably jump over. Somebody must’ve put something weird in that guy’s coffee.

Speaking of weird, another strange car ad was talking about reinventing things, like a baby that doesn’t poop and can time travel, or rain that makes you lose weight. I bet a lot of people liked the Seinfeld car commercial, but not me because I didn’t like his show. Another one had the sandman trip and dump the whole bag of sand on some guy who had a REALLY good dream about a car, and a bunch of other stuff. One of my favorites was a car ad that made tons of references to the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie. And that’s all the car ads I can remember!

Internet, Cell Phones, and Technology

There were a bunch of commercials about things on the internet, cell phones, and other tech stuff. But I don’t remember most of it since I’m surprisingly low tech. But here are a few standouts.

Geico must spend a lot on ads, as they have quite a few memorable characters and commercials, even without the Super Bowl. Here they had a guy trying to save money on diets by just hiring middle school teen girls to say “Ew, gross” every time he would get food. GoDaddy.com always has a few ads. I’m afraid to go to the GoDaddy site because I might see something I shouldn’t! Not sure what that site does anyway.

It’s tax season, so there was a tax ad about a kid having to go pee and finally went in the swimming pool water. Xbox actually had a Kinect ad, to try and promote anti-obesity in kids and encourage them to get up and play. And of course, the E-trade baby was back with another ad, this time he was at the hospital looking at newborns. Kind of weird. There was also a black and white commercial about a kid with a super powerful football kick, and his dad paid for all the damages with his smartphone. And last, the CareerBuilder.com monkeys were back. That was always fun.

One of my favorites was the MetLife insurance ad that started out with the Peanuts characters walking out on a meadow field, then He-Man came out and other cartoon characters. I saw everyone from Looney Tunes, Jetsons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Voltron, and more! I bet it was hard to get the rights to use all those cartoons at once! I’d like to see that commercial again to spot more cartoons!

Beer, Drink, and Food

Not a lot of interesting beer commercials this time, so we’ll combine them with other food and drink ads I saw. There was a rapper busting rhymes about Pizza Hut near the beginning of the game. Two things: I bet he got a headache being in that red room, and isn’t it a little late to be promoting pizza DURING the Super Bowl?

I have a close relative who works at Frito-Lay, who is owned by Pepsico, so I always pay attention to their ads since that’s her paycheck. They had a weird one with a king (is that Elton John?) being entertained by jesters and sending them through a trap door without any Pepsi. Later was another Pepsi commercial with the Coke delivery guy buying a Pepsi Max. On the Frito-Lay chip side were a couple of Doritos commercials. One with a dog bribing a guy with Doritos, so he doesn’t tell about what happened to a missing cat. Then another had a boy teasing his baby brother about not having any Doritos, so the grandma pulls the baby back in his jumper so he can reach the bag of chips like a slingshot.

Another favorite of mine was the M&M’s commercial with the new brown one and everyone thought she was naked. And then the red M&M showed up and decided to take his shell off and be naked, too, and they played that weird song where they sing “wiggle wiggle wiggle.” I like the M&M commercials and characters. Did you know the same advertising agency that brought us those new M&M guys also did the California Raisins and The Noid commercials? Yup, the company has a different name, but it’s still the same ad agency!

Coca Cola took the easy way out and used ads with their Polar Bears, but that’s OK because I like those. Supposedly you could go online and watch the bears react to what was going on in the Super Bowl. So you’d be watching someone watching the Super Bowl, while you were watching it, too. That’s too much multitasking for me!

Like I said, Budweiser didn’t have a lot of good ads this time, but a couple stood out. They had one about the end of Prohibition and a follow up about the decades since. At least the first one had the horses in it. Then they combined a commercial about GE turbines and beer. But my favorite was the adopted dog who could fetch beer for everyone.

I was surprised to see a yogurt ad during the Super Bowl. In this one, a guy was teasing his wife and not letting her take a bite of the yogurt. It must be really nutritious stuff because she got really strong and headbutted him across the room and roared at him when he got up! I never developed a taste for yogurt, myself.

Finally, I always try to not talk about the local ads, but one for fast food restaurant Jack in the Box made me laugh (but then, they usually do). In this one, they promoted their new line of bacon sandwiches by having a guy marrying bacon! I hear they’re also doing bacon milkshakes. I hate their food, but I love the Jack in the Box commercials and characters.

Movie Previews

They showed a lot of movie previews. I won’t go over the ones that didn’t interest me. Of course they had an Avengers preview. I was surprised to see another G.I. Joe movie. Since I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth, and can’t see 3-D effects, I won’t be going to see the Star Wars 3-D remakes. Finally was another preview for the upcoming Battleship movie. I want them to make movies about Hungry Hungry Hippos and Connect 4, those were my favorite board games as a kid.

Misc. Ads

We’ll conclude with some leftover ads that I couldn’t put in any other category. They had some guy with lots of tattoos modeling underwear for a store I never heard of. I just get my underwear at Wal-Mart, I’m that classy. There was also a little dog who won a dog race because he was wearing Sketchers shoes. Finally was a lady putting on sexy clothes and saying that Valentine’s Day isn’t that complicated and guys should just give ladies flowers. Not a very original gift, but she’s right. Valentine’s Day isn’t that complicated, it’s all the other stuff that is! Ha ha!

And that’s all the Super Bowl commercials I could think of. Not a lot of them impressed me, and I noticed there were less of them. Usually they’ll do a football play, show an ad, and then repeat the process. But this time they had more of the game. Guess a lot of people complained about that. Oh well. In the comments section, tell me your favorite Super Bowl ads!

Tags: Television