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Ford – 2004 – Ford GT

January 7, 2011 at 11:58 pm

In what year did somebody decide that car commercials couldn’t be the least bit interesting or entertaining?

We get it: cars are a serious investment, not a snack food that you buy on impulse. They don’t want to be all “jokey” about something like the Ford GT, since they are after calling it “the Pace Car for an entire company” (yeesh). But come on, can we get a little something to make this ad worth watching, especially if you’re going to ask us to watch it for sixty whole seconds?

The sound of the engine, the shredding of the tires, the squeel around the turns: that’s all good, clean, manly stuff. Maybe it’s about time they made a car commercial for the wife of the man who’s going through the mid-life crisis and wants to buy the new Ford GT. You know, to get her on board with the whole thing before he runs away with the babysitter?

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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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Diet Pepsi – 2006 – Stunt Double

January 5, 2011 at 2:03 am

While we love us some Jay Mohr and Jackie Chan, this commercial seems to be sending a mixed message. By swapping in Diet Coke as a stunt double, isn’t that kinda saying that Coke is more awesome than Pepsi? Jackie Chan doesn’t need a stunt double, and Jackie Chan kicks ass; Diet Pepsi does need stunt double, so Diet Pepsi must be a punk.

Frankly we can’t stand Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, or diet anything for that matter. The strong cancer aftertaste kind of turns us off.

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CareerBuilder – 2006 – Laser Pointer

January 5, 2011 at 1:53 am

Okay now, come on!  Who would not want to work here? We think the real reason CareerBuilder dropped the chimps has nothing to do with PETA, and everything to do with the fact that people watching their ads were secretly hoping their own workplace would turn into a wild monkey party, and nobody was actually going to CareerBuilder because of that.

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Ford – 2006 – Escape Hybrid

January 5, 2011 at 1:44 am

Kermit lectures everyone on how he’s better than us because he’s green, then stumbles upon an abandoned Ford Escape Hybrid at the top of a mountain and realizes that he’s not so great after all.

Does anyone else get creeped out by seeing Kermit’s feet? It’s one thing to enjoy the little guy in the context of him being a puppet, or muppet, or whatever. But then he walks around, rides in canoes, climbs mountains… it just feels somehow wrong.

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Sharpie – 2006 – Captain Hook

January 3, 2011 at 10:41 am

This is a great commercial for a great product, which when you think about it is pretty rare during the Super Bowl. You have lots of great commercials, an equal number of terrible products, and the rest of it just plain stinks.

So here’s a question: why aren’t all of Sharpie’s products these clicker thingies? Is there any value at all in having a cap?

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Diet Pepsi – 2006 – Brown And Bubbly

January 3, 2011 at 4:28 am

Okay, so we suppose it’s possible that they could have been ironically associating Pepsi with diarrhea; setting aside for a moment the fact that drinking too much could conceivably give you diarrhea, we’ll allow that as a possibility. So go all the way with it, own it, really let us have it! Don’t dance around the issue, show us some serious diarrhetic symbolism: chocolate soft-serve or something, we don’t know.

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Burger King – 2006 – Whopperettes

January 3, 2011 at 4:15 am

Right, so what started out as hands-down the worst commercial we’ve ever seen wound up somehow redeeming itself at the end. This whole thing reminds us of that old game Burgertime, anyone else remember that? Didn’t you want to toss pepper into the eyes of the strange burger-women and trample them to death?

What about the King back there, taking time out of his creepy peeping-Tom schedule to lead a 30′s musical full of women dressed as burger ingredients.

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World Baseball Classic – 2006

January 2, 2011 at 9:52 am

So this World Baseball Classic thing, has anyone else not heard of this?

Anyway, it sounds like this… baseball world thing is kind of exactly what the World Series is supposed to be, right? Doesn’t it? At least football doesn’t claim to have any sort of world domination championship: it’s just the Super Bowl. It’s a bowl, and it’s super.

Baseball? Yeah, we got the WORLD SERIES! We have the best teams in the WORLD play a championship game… and then we have something called a World Baseball Classic, too.

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Sierra Mist – 2006 – Airport Security

January 2, 2011 at 9:44 am

This spot is almost clairvoyant: flying in the United States today is like stepping into a dystopian future police state where water apparently explodes, microwaves are used for not finding weapons, and pedophiles get a free pass on groping your children.

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