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2005

Watch and comment on commercials shown during the 2005 Superbowl.

 

Heineken – 2005 – Brad Pitt Paparazzi

January 19, 2011 at 7:28 am

Say what you will about Brad Pitt, but the man is comfortable in his skin and that shows in every second of every performance he gives. Just the simple act of walking across the street for some beer gets his devoted performance.

Heineken here is trying to capture some of the Budweiser commercial love, but instead of doing something funny they wind up with… we don’t even really know what they did. We guess they thought it was funny enough that Brad Pitt is followed everywhere by paparazzi, but why? Is there anything even remotely funny about that? It’s like they’re saying to the viewing crowd “Look, people care when Brad Pitt leaves the house! Isn’t that great? Nobody cares about anything you do! Don’t you want to buy some Heineken now?”

No fellas, no, we do not want to buy any of your skunky beer.

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Batman Begins Trailer – 2005

January 18, 2011 at 7:39 am

Wow, we wish we hadn’t seen Batman Begins already so that we could go watch it again for the first time. This trailer isn’t that spectacular now that we look back on it, but the movie behind it is amazing.

It seems like the best part of this trailer is the look at what will become the new Batmobile, right at the end.

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ABC – 2005 – Addicted To Lost

January 18, 2011 at 7:30 am

We can’t figure out what’s being defiled more here: Lost or Addicted To Love. While we’re not sure that something as corny and obvious as this would entice anyone who wasn’t already watching the show to start tuning in (seriously, did someone in their high school video yearbook class put this together?), we have to admit that it makes us nostalgic for the old bird.

The show had its ups and downs, it wasn’t always brilliant, and they kind of wasted several hours of our lives with the “Tailies” who just up and disappeared, never to be heard from again, but we were sad to see it end.

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Cadillac – 2005 – V Series

January 18, 2011 at 7:20 am

Cadillac does their best to lose us in the first twenty seconds of this too-long ad, then makes us think they’re doing a Battlestar Galactica tribute. Turns out they’re just proud of how fast their dumb cars go, and they were using the analogy (literary word!) of their cars shooting out of a tunnel like a bullet out of the barrel of a gun. If they tried that crap today they’d have the “liberal media” accusing them of fostering an atmosphere of violence.

Does anyone but old people even drive Cadillacs anymore? According to an informal, unscientific, and most likely made up poll I just dreamed up, the average Cadillac drive is 63 years old. Do they really need to be going 60 miles per hour in 5 seconds?

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Anheuser-Busch – 2005 – Thank You

January 13, 2011 at 3:23 am

This is an emotionally manipulative piece that aired during the 2005 game, as a thank you to the soldiers both at home and abroad. There’s not much to say about it, unless you want to get all cynical and talk about how Anheuser-Busch uses what looks at first to be a sincere message that actually is just a ploy to sell more beer.

We understand that the point of advertising is to sell stuff, but if they really wanted to simply thank our armed forces service members, they could have left their logo off the ad entirely and left it up to the audience to figure out who aired the spot. That would have been a bolder, more honest message and may have even generated more brand loyalty and sold even more beer.

But oh well, thanking soldiers is good advertising no matter how you do it, we suppose.

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Lays – 2005 – MC Hammer

January 6, 2011 at 7:56 am

Lays touches MC Hammer for a retro-themed commercial about kids that lose their ball over a neighbor’s fence. This commercial is… kind of cute, we guess, but lacks an edge that most Super Bowl spots seem to go for. We guess this is Lay’s, not Doritos or Budweiser, so dialing down the sex and violence was a good call.

This spot ironically feels to us more like a contest-submitted entry rather than an ad-agency produced commercial. And really: is it that great that the neighbor gave you MC Hammer in exchange for a bag of Lay’s Potato Chips? Wouldn’t, we don’t know, John Mayer or Chris Brown have been a better deal?

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Budweiser – 2005 – Zoo Menagerie

January 5, 2011 at 10:07 am

We wish we could have been shown the other end of this already clever-enough commercial: the animals escaping from the zoo. Or circus, or Madagascar, or wherever. The kangaroo feigns illness to get the zookeeper in the habitat, then stomps him to death and tosses the keys to the elephant, the only animal in the commercial with the dexterity to open the rest of the cages.

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Diet Pepsi – 2005 – P. Diddy Hitches A Ride

January 5, 2011 at 9:56 am

Once again Pepsi puts out an ad that is clever and funny, but subtly undermines their own image. Everyone decides to drive a Diet Pepsi truck after seeing P. Diddy step out of one on the red carpet at an awards show, but did you notice the same thing we did? They still can’t get anyone to drink the stuff?

They shot a whole commercial of people driving entire truckloads of Diet Pepsi around town, but nobody drinks it! Plus, the real reason anyone even wanted to drive the truck in the first place is because P. Diddy did it; if he had shown up to a party in a duck tour boat, everyone would want one of those. Even in the ad’s own warped universe nobody drove a Pepsi truck out of any brand loyalty, it was just the fashionable thing to do.

We love Wilmer Valderrama backing over a newspaper rack, though.

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Subway – 2005 – I Need You Now

December 11, 2010 at 12:39 pm

What exactly is the implication here? Did they do something unspeakable with the sandwiches, or even… to the sandwiches? Can’t a couple of totally baked twenty-somethings eat a hot steaming sandwich in peace without being hassled by The Man?

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Emerald Nuts – 2005 – Exaggerating Dad

December 11, 2010 at 12:33 pm

So we kind of liked this one to start off with, but then the more we think about it the more awful the feeling we get in the pit of our stomach. It’s kind of funny, we guess? But then it just seems like the Dad is borderline verbally abusive, especially when you see the look of fear and apprehension on the face of the daughter when she finally gets up the courage to ask for some nuts.

Then again we really love nuts too, so…

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