Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials

AP Photo/David J. Phillip
AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Sunday’s Super Bowl featured commercials sold at $4.5 million per 30 seconds of airtime. It’s a uniquely capitalistic ritual to watch advertisements for product as entertainment, but few of those commercials lived up to expectation – and some absolutely lived down to our worst expectations. Here are the best and worst Super Bowl commercials:

BudweiserBudweiser’s “Lost Dog” ad combined the company’s famous penchant for showing adorable animals with beer. A winning combination.

Sure, it has nothing to do with beer. But it has hero Clydesdales saving a cute puppy. So shut up.

Nationwide. The commercial features a child talking about all the things he never got to do because he died, then gives us a pitch for insurance. Who focused grouped this monstrosity? And who, exactly, was on the focus group, a bunch of Goth S&M freaks? Child death doesn’t make for a stellar insurance pitch, especially given that insurance does not childproof your home, it just pays you if you fail to do so. This commercial was so awful that it has spawned a trending hashtag, #NationwideAMovie, dedicated to turning movie titles into horrific descriptions of child death. It also spawned the single best meme of the Super Bowl:

FiatFiat uses Viagra to upgrade their cars. So the handling might be kind of stiff.

AlwaysIn the vein of selling you product while selling you a trite message about feminism and bullying, Always featured girls running “like a girl,” throwing “like a girl,” fighting “like a girl.” The point: it isn’t bad to do anything like a girl.

As a general matter, it is wildly unnecessary to connect throwing like a girl with inability to be a doctor (my wife is in medical school) or a businesswoman (my mother runs a film and television company). Both of them throw like girls. As do virtually all women, given that according to David Epstein’s The Sports Gene, “if you pulled a thousand men off the street, 997 of them would be able to throw a ball harder than the average woman.” That’s not a horrible thing. It’s just a fact. It doesn’t mean that individual women can’t throw better than some individual men, like this guy. But to pretend that girls don’t generally throw like girls is to ignore the fact that virtually all girls throw like girls. And that’s not a big deal. A better message: women are capable of dominating men at virtually everything not directly related to sexual dimorphism. Why not make a commercial in which a boy tells a girl she throws like a girl, then end the commercial with her as a woman, using him as her secretary?

Dodge. This commercial polled extremely highly. It features a bunch of people over 100 years old talking about what they’ve learned from life. Then it shows a car.

We only hope that none of the people in the commercial still have their driver’s licenses. And a few more useful tips would have been helpful – tips like, “Always eat your fiber.” Also, if Dodge is going to tell us to “stop bitching,” perhaps they should stop seeking taxpayer funding.

Coca-ColaTheir commercial suggests that pouring Coke on your computer will make the internet a happier place. It also suggests that Coke may be going back to their original cocaine-laden formula.

McDonald’sIn the vein of heartwarming commercials, McDonald’s says they will sell you your food if you do something – dance, call your mom, etc.


This does not seem like a profitable business model. Stockholders should be worried.

Supercell. A personal favorite, because Liam Neeson.

EsuranceThis commercial makes no sense. But Bryan Cranston.

Mophie. This commercial tells us what happens if God’s cellphone battery runs out. Hint: it isn’t good.

God’s cellphone battery must have run out, actually. It’s the only way to explain both Barack Obama’s re-election and Pete Carroll passing on second down one yard from the end zone with Marshawn Lynch in the lineup.

TurboTax. Points for Tea Party reference.

And no, the founding fathers would not have stood for free filing. Or any of this taxation crap, for that matter.

Fifty Shades of Grey. This was the third worst thing at the Super Bowl, after Katy Perry and Pete Carroll’s playcalling.

SquareSpace. At some point, the Dude has to stop abiding. Right?

TMobile. Yes, everyone hates Kim Kardashian. And yes, that hatred is justified. But this commercial is sort of funny.

The commercials disappointed. But at least the game didn’t. Unless you like good play calls at the end of games. Then, it was an awful afternoon.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.orgFollow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

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