2025 Super Bowl Commercial Review: The hair has left my body
$8 million per spot gets you fleeting facial hair, women’s empowerment, and AI
If there was a theme running through this year’s Super Bowl Ads, it was one balancing female empowerment with traditional family values as we saw advocation of women’s athletics along with touching ads featuring families, hugging and all. If anything, both can manage to co-exist.
Last year, this space didn’t exactly praise the quality of Super Bowl ads as they were mostly poor quality crap with a few celebrities this writer either couldn’t stand or couldn’t identify out of a police lineup (not to mention the original Super Bowl ad review – which had to be pulled and re-written, was too negative in tone with grammatical and spelling errors, and misidentified an Alicia Keys song.)
This year’s batch was better and there were some truly original, funny, and touching ads (although this isn’t the consensus elsewhere – a complete reversal from last year when I blasted most of the ads for being stupid. Funny how that works.) Outside of the junk He Gets Us and Drew Barrymore ads, there weren’t any really horrible Super Bowl commercials in 2025 and the worst list contains mainly boring ads.
There were other themes as well. Celebrities were present as always, but three – Catherine O’Hara (Michelob Ultra), Dan Levy (Homes.com), and Eugene Levy (Little Caesars) all starred together in the Emmy-winning series Schitt’s Creek (O’Hara and the elder Levy also starred on SCTV.) AI was a running theme as both Google and ChatGPT ran ads touting the controversial technology. Slowness was another as the stars of The Fast And Furious were pitching ice cream and Coors Light went the Garfield route, temporarily renaming their beer Mondays Light. Animals were prevalent, in real and AI forms. And the weirdest was people’s facial hair leaving their bodies to chase food (as depicted in Little Caesars and Pringles ads.)
So here are this year’s best and worst ads in the nineteenth annual T Dog Media Super Bowl Commercial Review, featuring those that aired between the first quarter and the end of the game. Keep in mind the videos posted here may disappear at any time and some are longer than they originally ran during the Super Bowl:
Best
1. Nike, “So Win”. The most impactful commercial with female superstars Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, JuJu Watkins, and Sha’Carri Richardson, sending a clear message countering the misogyny directed at female athletes. You can’t win? Well, go win. Nike on the ball, as usual.
2. NFL, “Flag 50”. A spot-on ad on the origins of how women penetrated their way into flag football in 1985 and advocated for the sport to be sanctioned in all 50 states. And the bald principal in the ad? None other than Pat MacAfee (click on the link in the title to watch.) Like the Nike ad, this commercial also featured a powerful theme of female empowerment.
3. Pfizer, “Knock Out”. Another effective and touching ad as a kid being cheered like a boxer and his fight against a big scary opponent – cancer (the funniest part? The word “penis” from LL Cool J’s Mama Said Knock You Out made into the commercial)
4. Uber Eats, “A Century Of Saving”. Uber and Matthew McConaughey have been on a season-long crusade suggesting that watching football will make you want to buy and eat more food. So that’s why they nicknamed Bears great William Perry “The Refrigerator”… McConaughey as Mike Ditka was tremendous. Bear down!
5. Little Caesars, “Whoa”. My Pizza Puffs Are Like…Whoa: The Detroit-based pizza chain has always hit a home run with offbeat commercials, dating back to when they had a dog say “I love you”. And they hit another with Eugene Levy’s eyebrows exiting his face (an unrelated Pringles ad featured the same concept, only with mustaches.)
6. Google Pixel, “Dream Job”. I know many people hate AI, but this ad can relate because if you need to explain to an employer what you have been doing for the last few years out of the workforce, speaking to Gemini certainly helps prepare you for an interview. And it’s a touching ad, too.
7. Hellmann’s, “When Harry Met Hellmann’s”. A takeoff of the classic scene in the 1986 film “When Harry Met Sally” with a Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan reunion. I have what she’s having – on my sandwich.
8. WeatherTech, “Whatever Comes Your Way”. Four Grandmas take a cruise on the highway and get into trouble, showing you’re never too old to fight the power.
9. Taco Bell, “The Fans”. This is the ad that made me laugh out loud. Taco Hell proudly proclaims that they are for the fans, not celebrities like Dua Lupa and LeBron James, whose expressions were priceless.
10. Nerds, “Shaboozey”. The country music star having fun down Bourbon Street (or a street that looks like Bourbon Street) with some gummy friends.
Worst
To see these ads, click the link on the title.
1. Tubi, “Cowboy”. If the kid were born 65 years ago, he would’ve fit right in, since Westerns were popular at the time. But this grotesque ad was the epitome of crap – not to mention this could’ve easily passed off as an ad for Scripps’ digital network Grit.
2. He Gets Us, “What is Greatness”. Certainly not this commercial, which misuses a crappy cover version of Depeche Mode’s awesome hit 1990 single Personal Jesus. This is their third consecutive time here in the “worst” category for this religious group SuperPAC, run by a ultra right-wing Hobby Lobby founder.
3. MSC Cruises – “Holiday”. No, I don’t want to go on a cruise with Drew Barrymore since she’s what Seinfeld refers to as a “close talker”.
4. Mountain Dew, “Kiss From a Lime”. Seal as an… um, seal. How original.
5. NerdWallet, “Genius Beluga”. Flipper’s back, and he’s pitching financial products.
6. Him & Hers, “Sick Of The System”. This commercial was called out last week by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, for omitting side effects and safety information.
7. Liquid Death, “Safe For Work”. So, you can drink AND drive, even though there’s no alcohol. Not sure what message this sends, and it’s probably not a good one.
8. Poppi, “Soda Thoughts”. This is an ad that’s supposed to take down the Coke-Pepsi cartel? It’s basically Shasta under another name.
9. T-Mobile, “Starlink”. What is a StarLink? Does America know what it even means? (I know what StarLink is, and no thanks.)
10. Dove, “These Legs”. No problem with the ad, but why are we producing a commercial in a 4:3 standard definition format in The Year Of Our Lord 2025? It’s like shooting a commercial on 16mm film in 1994.
Halftime Show
This year’s Apple Music-sponsored halftime show featured Grammy-winning Hip-Hop artist Kendrick Lamar performing his greatest hits, including the most popular diss track of all time – Not Like Us, aimed at rival rapper Drake. The show featured Samuel L. Jackson in an Uncle Sam costume (ha, ha) with SZA performing along Lamar with hundreds of dancers, with some even resembling an American flag. You even had Drake’s ex – Serena Williams – yes, that Serena Williams – in the show doing a crip walk. Lamar proved why we won Grammys last week…his performance was perfect, didn’t miss a beat, and was fun to watch.
The reaction was decidedly mixed – fans of Hip-Hop and Lamar loved it, while older audiences predictably hated it, which isn’t a surprise in a very fragmented media world. Even though this 52-year-old writer has long stopped following the current music scene, Not Like Us was in the public consciousness so much last summer, even those who weren’t familiar with his music knew whom he was referring to. Not Like Us was played at NBA and WNBA games, picnics, from cars – it was played everywhere (except at retail of course, where burned-out Mariah Carey and Wang Chung music are the unfortunate rule.) The same hateful reactions I saw on social media are the same ones I saw in 1990 when rap was breaking into the mainstream. Well, I have news for you: it is NOW the mainstream. The days of insipid slogans like “The Best Hits With No Rap” are over – it isn’t 1996 anymore. Deal with it, America.
Not like us, indeed.
Grade: A+
Notes
– USA Today’s 37th annual Super Bowl Ad Meter had Budweiser’s “First Delivery” ad as tops (it didn’t make the top 10 here) while another Tubi ad finished dead last in 57th place. For the first time ever, the top best and worst ad on T Dog Media wasn’t found anywhere on the Ad Meter.
– A Super Bowl ad cost $8 million per thirty-second spot this year – makes you wonder how much Jeep spent for their extra-long Harrison Ford commercial.
– The most stunning ad was a local Jewel-Osco spot featuring a man and woman meeting at Jewel, falling in love, getting married, and giving birth to…some kind of mascot? At least it wasn’t another Malman Law or Smithe sister.
– For those past Super Bowl Commercial Reviews dating back to 2007, click here.