2024 Super Bowl Commercial Review: Breaking The Internet (repost)

Celebs rule as Beyonce makes a surprise Verizon appearance

(Editor’s Note: This piece was re-posted and re-edited as the original contained numerous grammatical and spelling errors – not to mention misidentifying an Alicia Keys song. The tone of this article was also too dark. You expect a high-quality product from T Dog Media, so I would like to apologize to all our readers and will work in the future to prevent anything like this from happening again. Thanks. – T. H.)

In my eighteenth year of writing this, I wonder if Madison Avenue really has a pulse in an era where linear TV is clearly on life support. But it’s the Super Bowl and it’s the most-watched event of the year –  made even more special with Queen of Pop Taylor Swift in attendance, so this is still the best place to get your product out to the masses. The commercials took a back seat to the game itself, Usher’s halftime show, and the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance. As was the case last year, a good portion of these Super Bowl ads were total ass.

But this space came up with ten good ones, many of them funny. And Chicago was well represented with our town’s Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Hudson, Common, and Mr. T in Super Bowl ads. Thus, here’s the eighteenth annual roundup of the Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials and also a review of the halftime show.

Keep in mind these videos may disappear from YouTube at anytime and may not be available to watch here in the future.

Best:

1. Verizon: “Can’t B Broken”. Move over Taylor Swift, Beyonce Knowles stole the Super Bowl Commercial show in an very funny ad for Verizon – not to mention promoting her latest album. The reason why the ad worked – we get to see Beyonce do humorous shit trying to break the internet, and it was fun to watch.

2. State Farm, “Like A Good Neighbaaa…”. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in the State Farm Action Film saving us from high insurance rates and the Allstate Mayhem Guy. But he didn’t win an award at the – not even a Most Valuable Bundler one (a certain Chiefs QB always wins those.) This was the winner in the USA Today Ad Meter Poll.

https://youtu.be/p8ZYgb8Osek

3. Doritos Dinamita: “Dina & Mita”. Two old ladies (played by Patricia Mauceri and Olivia Negron) battling the young ones to savior the sweet lime chip.

https://youtu.be/qQJyZseER6I

4. BetMGM, “BetMGM is for everyone, aka He’s Won Enough”. While Tom Brady starred in an ad that was complete ass (see Dunkin’ below), he was great with Vince Vaughn as BetMGM feels the seven-time Super Bowl winner has “won enough”.

https://youtu.be/JTIdwwa0Dxo

5. Mountain Dew, “Having A Blast”. Aubrey Plaza partying with Mountain Dew and even taking it Game Of Thrones style.

https://youtu.be/pAdDi6G74mc

6. T-Mobile, “T-Mobile Auditions”. Who wants to be the next T-Mobile spokesperson? Can’t do worse than the two Scrubs stars who promised us “they’ll never raise your rates at T-Mobile…”

7. Uber Eats. “Worth Remembering”. The biggest laugh in this commercial was Friends stars Jennifer Anniston forgetting who David Schwimmer was.

8. Wicked Trailer. For the first time, T Dog Media is allowing movie trailers in the tally. With that said, if you couldn’t see the Broadway play Wicked, the trailer should convince you to check it out.

9. M&Ms, “The M&M’s Almost Champions Ring Of Comfort”. With the exception of the predictable Maya Rudolph Super Bowl ad, M&Ms are always gold – er…I mean diamond as Dan Mariano, Terrell Owens, and even Scarlett Johansson receiving the Ring Of Comfort. Too bad you can’t eat it.

https://youtu.be/9UBWFIArQxs

10. Paramount Plus, “Hail Patrick”. Paramount Plus may be failing as a streamer, but Sir Patrick knows how to mix well with an animated characters that has the same head shape as Stewie Griffin, but points off for Creed.

Worst

Click on the link to watch.

1. RFK Jr. ad, “American Values”. Really nothing to say here as we all saw this coming  with the commercial ranking dead last in the USA Today’s Ad Meter – and even worse, it prevented a Bennifer repeat.

2. Dunkin’, The Dun Kings. More like Dumb Ass Kings. Last year’s Bennifer ad finished first in the USA Today Ad Meter and this one comes in second. May be popular, but not here in T Dog Media land.

3. Temu, “Makes Your Wishes Come True”. For the first time, we have a Super Bowl Ad whose app the Better Business Bureau suggests you take off your phone. Even better, CBS 2 ran a story on its late news Sunday night about how the Temu app steals your information (disclaimer: I worked for the BBB from 2008 to 2016.) Shop like a billionaire? More like steal like a billionaire. You know, like Elon Musk.

4. He Gets Us, “Foot Washing”., “ As this space said before, using organized religion for commercial purposes is a complete turn-off and not surprisingly, those behind the ads aren’t stand-up citizens devoted to equality and inclusion. Of note, He Gets Us had advertising signage in Guaranteed Rate Field last season, so what else is new coming from the MLB South Side team who plays there….

5. Starry, “Love Triangle”. I thought Ice Spice was the daughter of one of the Spice Girls. Anyway, this ad sucked.

6. Homes.com, “Launch”, “Salon”, “Mascot”. Someone tell the Leonard Hoffestter-lookalike we don’t want to buy homes from him.

7. Oreo, “Twist On It”. Any ads with any Kardashian earns a demerit from this space.

8. E Trade, “Picklebabies”. Is it still 1987? No more talking babies, please.

9. Discover, “Robots”. Note: This ad ran days before the game. Jennifer Coolidge speaks on the phone to an unseen woman in customer service named Mya (not the R&B singer of the same name) asking if she’s a robot and then asks herself she’s a robot. Yeesh.

10. Google Pixel, “Javier In Frame”. Trying to be nice and I know it doesn’t deserve to be in this category, but man… this ad was very tough to watch.

Halftime Show: Usher was the headlining act, and he did not disappoint. And naturally, he had some friends with him: Lil’ Jon, Ludacris, H.E.R, will i. am. and Jermaine Dupri, who for some reason, looked like CeeLo Green. After over twenty years in the game, Usher’s still got it, performing hits U Don’t Have To Call, Burn, Confessions, Yeah!, Caught Up, the widely-derided OMG, and My Boo with Alicia Keys, who was off-key when she started to sing If I Ain’t Got You and then came her close dancing with Usher (which they did in the My Boo video), leading to terrible puns and martial etiquette tips on ElonWorld galore. But I’ve seen her in concert before and she is the ultimate professional.

The atmosphere was fun – rolling skaters, marching bands, tons of dancers moving to the beat. It was a nice throwback to 2004 in a year I was still invested in the music scene.

Usher will be in town this October at the United Center where he’s already a winner compared to the usual tenants there.

Audience reaction was mixed and so were the reviews. If you were a fan of Usher’s, you were happy. If you weren’t, you didn’t care. But for this viewer, a good time was had. Then again, I’ve listened to more of Usher’s work than say…Travis Kelce’s girlfriend.

Grade: A

Of note:

It aired just before the game so it didn’t count, but Rob Gronkowski missed again in FanDuel’s Kick of Destiny 2, meaning unfortunately, there will likely be a Kick Of Destiny 3.

There were two homages to the iconic film Flashdance: Nerds candies and That T-Mobile Home Internet Feeling with Jennifer Beals herself even showing up.

If you want to revisit past T Dog Media’s Super Bowl Commercial reviews dating back to 2007, click here.