Super Bowl Commercials Part 1: Super or Sucky??

This week, everyone will be talking about the Super Bowl commercials. Yes, the game was pretty good, and exciting, and I think the game beat out the commercials this year. Some companies tried the same old routine: make the public laugh. It worked for a few companies. The rest just made me wonder who thought that was funny enough for them to put that much money into that commercial. Other companies tried to reach the public by allowing members of the public to design their commercials. In my humble opinion, they should have kept it “in-house.” Now, in this post, I’m only going to cover the first half of the game’s commercials since there are so many in the whole game. So here are the winners and the losers in my mind from the first half of Sunday’s Super Bowl. Everyone else is giving their opinions about these commercials, so why don’t I add mine to the mix?

I think the winner, hands down, is the Blockbuster commercial that aired during the first quarter. The commercial features a hamster and a rabbit in a pet shop across the street from Blockbuster. They are trying to order videos via the “mouse,” which, instead of being a computer mouse, is a real mouse. It is hysterical. The animated mouse’s facial expressions make the commercial. They try clicking it by pushing down on its body, then moving it back and forth, all with no luck. Then the commercial flips to the actual ad for the movie service (similar to NetFlix, in that you can order movies online, have them delivered, and then either return them via mail or back to the store. The difference is that you can actually go to the store and pick out movies, all on the same account.) The commercial ends with the hamster holding up the mouse’s tail and saying, “Here’s the problem. We forgot to plug it in!” I think my grandmother, who lies across the street, could probably hear me laughing at that commercial.

Another great commercial was the Budweiser Dalmatian commercial. Basically, there’s this adorable homeless white dog who is wandering around the town, looking for food, staying away from another nasty dog, who then finds himself at a parade. As he is standing at the edge of the road, watching the Budweiser cart go past with this loved-looking Dalmatian riding alongside the driver and feeling sad about his life (the look on his face tells the whole story. This dog had a very expressive face.), a truck comes by and splashes mud and dirty water all over him. The mud settles on him in a way that makes it look like he has spots, just like a Dalmatian. Then, all of the sudden, he’s on that cart next to the other driver, feeling like he belonged somewhere. It’s a great, heart-warming commercial. They are a rarity anymore, so it’s great when you see one that is genuinely good, and simple. It speaks to everyone.

Now, there isn’t one commercial I can say is the worst commercial of the first half. There are a few that had me wondering why anyone would spend money making them. One of those is the Sierra Mist commercial that played during the first quarter featuring a comedian who has a “beard-comb-over.” Instead of being funny, it’s really just creepy. He gets fired for it, and when he walks out from behind the desk muttering something about social norms, he’s wearing short shorts and old roller skates. The whole commercial gets a 10 on my “what was the point of that?” The other Sierra Mist commercial had me shaking my head too. It was a self-defense class to learn how to protect your Sierra Mist. And that was it. Again, what was the point? It didn’t make me want to buy the product. It made me want to find the person who thought that the idea was a good one for a commercial that is going to air during the Super Bowl, and ask them how much money they wasted on that commercial.

Then there were the two commercials that Doritos ran during the first half (one in the first quarter, one in the second). They were made by members of the public, who I assume won a contest (I don’t eat Doritos so I don’t know if they ran a contest or something like that. I don’t remember hearing anything about it, but that doesn’t mean much.). I am afraid to see what the losers were. One commercial has a guy driving down the street eating a bag of regular Doritos. He sees a woman walking down the street eating Spicy Doritos. As he’s looking at her, he rear-ends another car and his bag of Doritos gets squished by his head. At that point, the word “crunchy” pops up on the screen, as if the chips were then “crunchy,” like they suddenly morphed into another type of their chips. Then you see the woman running onto the street, presumably to stop the accident, and she’s a “Bold” Dorito at that moment. Then the word “smooth” appears on the screen with a question mark, as the woman trips and bashes her head into the passenger side door of the guy’s car. And that’s the commercial. It really does nothing to make me want to buy their product, and isn’t that the point of a commercial, especially one that cost so much just to air it. I can only assume that they were trying to identify with the average person who dreams that they could have a commercial air, especially one during the Super Bowl. It just didn’t work for me.

The second Doritos commercial made even less sense. It features a woman working at a grocery store checkout line who is waiting on man who is buying numerous bags of Doritos, just like he was having a party (even a Super Bowl party. Just a coincidence? I think not!). As she checks him out, she comments on the items she’s passing over the scanner. As she checks the regular nacho cheese Doritos, she makes some strange hand gesture and says, “old school.” Then, she passes the Fiery Habenero (I’m sorry about the spelling. I don’t have a bag of Doritos in front of me.) flavor Doritos over the scanner and says, “Oh yeah! Those are hot!” Then there are the Salsa Verde chips; with them, she starts purring at the man and he purrs back. The commercial now begins to seriously teeter on the edge of very strange. Next is the Blazing Buffalo Ranch. With them, she says, “Giddy up” in a suggestive manner. This one has officially fallen over the edge of creepiness. Then the company’s logo pops up along with their website where you can go to watch more of the commercials made by the average person. No, thanks. I’ll stick with normal commercials that are made by multi-billion dollar companies that know statistics and not so much of the people.

There were definitely some winners. However, the majority of them were either somewhat scary or completely creepy. Let’s hope the second half gives us viewers some better things to watch during the game’s breaks.

Source: AOL Sports