For the second year in a row, The T Dog Media Blog picks the best and worst commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. Here are the five best and the five worst: (Click the link to watch the commercial)
Best
1. Dwayne Wins (T-Mobile) This ad featuring Charles Barkley and the Miami Heat’s Dwayne Wade was funny as hell. I couldn’t stop laughing.
2. It’s Mine (Coca-Cola) – A close second. It’s a battle of the Underdog balloon and the Stewie balloon over a Coca-Cola – balloon. And guess who comes away with the Coke…
3. Budweiser Clydesdale Team – A Clydesdale fails to make the team. So, who is his coach to train him to make next year’s team? A Dalmatian. Very clever.
4. Nod (Diet Pepsi Max) – Haddaway’s 1993 hit What Is Love is used in this commercial, reminiscent of those Night at the Roxbury sketches on Saturday Night Live with Chris Kattan…
5. Magnetic Attraction (Pepsi) – Who here doesn’t want to see Justin Timberlake get what’s coming to him? Freakin’ hilarious.
Honorable Mention: WALL*E SuperBowl Spot (Disney), Perfume (Planters), “Truth in Engineering” (Audi), Victoria’s Secret Ad (well, duh?)
Worst
1. Trading Baby 2008 (E*TRADE) – Oh wow, a talking baby. Didn’t we see this a Quizno’s ad several years ago with Baby Bob? How original. Oh, oh, and now, the kid pukes on camera. Hey kid, down on the floor… DOWN ON THE FLOOR!
2. Meet Carmen Electra (Ice Breakers) – She’s still around? What is she, 50 or something? And why does she have a Super Bowl Ad?
3. Breathe Fire (Bud Light) – Completely, utterly stupid.
4. Queen of Hearts (Career Builder) – Yes, your heart can jump right out of your body and leaves for a better place! The only surprise here, is the lady didn’t immediately drop dead (so that’s why Dick Cheney’s been alive all those years…)
5. Thrillicious: 2008 Sobe Life – That was Naomi Campbell was in this ad? I thought it was Rihanna or that chick who won recently “won” Top Model…
Also in the trash bin: Both Sales Genie commercials (and you thought last year’s ads were bad) and Carlos Mencia’s Bud Light commercial (did he steal this from Joe Rogan, too?), plus another anti-drug commercial from your friend and mine, the government.
Halftime Show: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the performers. Would it kill them to play some new stuff? (and they didn’t play my favorites – “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”. Totally disappointing. Spent halftime on YouTube.)
Other notes:
-USA Today’s annual Ad Meter ranked Budweiser Clydesdale Team ad number one on its survey, while the Doritos ad featuring an unknown signer ranked at the bottom.
– Bob Garfield of Ad Age reviews the Super Bowl ads. Memo to Garfield: Dude, lighten up (and whose this Terence Henderson guy making nasty comments to someone in the comments section? Impostors…)
– For the second year in a row, YouTube is rating the ads. The winner will be announced on February 12 (hopefully, it’s not the one with the baby throwing up.)
– The reception toward this year’s ads, much like last year’s, were pretty cold, and yours truly tend to agree (maybe the copywriters should’ve went out on strike as well?) Most were average, at best. I scaled back on writing about the Super Bowl ads this year and limited them to the top five and the bottom five. Writing about last year’s ads was too much work, and for what?
– Thumbs down to TV Squad for their ad reviews. Like geez, how many softball reviews can you squeeze in an article? They all weren’t that great. Only the Meet the Spartans generation can write such junk…
– By the way, if you skipped the pregame show… good for you! The only performer worth watching was Alicia Keys. It was typical Hollywood arrogance on display with a “red carpet”, egged on by Ryan Seacrest, and constant tie-ins to American Idol. This was the Super Bowl, not a Lakers game.