Flint Township View

The other reason we watch the Super Bowl





 

 

The Super Bowl — the annual championship of all football games with all the bling and fanfare of an Apollo Creed fight. It’s four quarters of the best football you’ll see all year (in theory) with a superstar filled mega-concert condensed into a halftime show.

Like everything else which attracts a lot of viewers on television, it is also filled with commercials. Advertisers know they have to roll out their best commercials in order to keep fans watching, and because viewers have just gotten used to being entertained between plays.

This year, however, I think the commercials were pretty weak. They didn’t make me laugh as hard, but were a little more thought-provoking instead.

Not exactly what we’d expect to see from Super Bowl commercials.

There were a number of commercials friends on social media said they liked. The insurance company esurance scored a big hit with its commercial which had a patron at a pharmacy discovering Walter White, the teacher turned meth-maker (played by Bryan Cranston) from the AMC TV show Breaking Bad, behind the counter.

The series of Doritos ads, among which featured a little girl auctioning the snack chips from her lemonade stand and a pig that flies using a jetpack, were also pretty darn funny. Of course, it wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without a few good Doritos commercials.

My great nephew Hunter, age 5, apparently liked the Nissan commercial, according to his mom. I’m assuming, due to his love of race cars and his dad, it was the Nissan ad which featured the racecar driver and his son set to the song “Cats in the Cradle.” Thank goodness he doesn’t know what that song’s about, because it’s nothing like his dad.

My personal favorite was the Brady Bunch Snickers commercial featuring Danny Trejo, the tough guy Hispanic actor, who was supposed to be a hungry Marcia Brady throwing a tantrum after Peter Brady broke her nose with a football. After Trejo eats the Snickers bar he turns back into Marcia, only to have actor Steve Buschemi as Jan Brady grumbling nearby “It’s always about Marcia … Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”

There were also some bad commercials. The biggest flop was a Nationwide insurance commercial about a boy who says he will never grow up, learn to ride a bike, learn to fly, get cooties or be married because he died. The commercial then goes into how Nationwide is about protecting children. Thanks Nationwide for being a huge buzzkill in the middle of everyone’s Super Bowl party!

Then there were the thought-provoking ads, like the Dodge 100th anniversary spot which featured centenarians driving a Dodge Challenger muscle car — demonstrating you’re never too old to enjoy driving a Dodge. There was also the Like a Girl ad campaign by Always feminine hygiene products, which successfully put to rest stereotypes about females by attacking notions like “you run like a girl” and “you throw like a girl.”

Maybe not the traditional Super Bowl ad, but it made a good statement about how young women shouldn’t let their self-confidence be torn down when they are going through puberty. ggould@mihomepaper.com


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