XXXIX Super Bowl Ads and ads from the past.

While we wait for the yearly rush for the superbowl commercials which we - as we always do - will post a few minutes after the game is over, let's have a look at the tops and flops adverts from past superbowls.

 

Since our superbowl commercial archive stretches 32 years, the largest super bowl ad collection in the world wide web by far, we have many ups and downs to choose from.

 

Do you remember these commercials?

Flops:

1985: Following Apple's 1984 spot came Lemmings, a more infamous-than-famous Super Bowl spot that torqued off a lot of hard-core PC users by portraying them as blindfolded, mindless drones marching off to their doom. While panned by most critics, it did set the stage for the successful Lemmings computer games in the mid-90s.


1986: Burger King's "Find Herb," you could win a million dollars if you spotted Herb at your local Burger King, but nobody seemed to care.


1991: Budweiser's "Bud Bowl" ads, where bottles of beer played the game while cans of beer commented. Either loved or hated but mostly hated, especially in advertising schools around that time where we mocked them mercilessly.

 

1997: Holiday Inn introduced a lady who once was a man in their ad. The Bible belt in America has a fit and the ad was pulled off the air. See more at CommercialCloset: "unhappy Holiday Inn's franchisees and a call-in campaign from the Southern Baptists convinced the hotelier to yank the spot after its $1 million debut on the Super Bowl"

 

2000: Watching Mohammed Ali grunt and wheeze in a commercial that made little sense impressed no one, though it depressed a lot of Ali fans.

 

2004: McDonalds - Dryer sheet McDonald's thinks the smell of greasy foods is a turn-on which turned everyone off. Sadly, not the last time they equate burgers with sex.

 

Tops:

1969: An animated razor from Gillette demonstrates what "Techmatic adjustable" means, with his voice.

 

1973: Farrah Fawcett sings to Joe Namath about creamy Noxzema.

 

1980: Mean Joe Greene chugs Coke and gives his jersey to little boy. What a tear-jerker. Mean Joe ain't mean!

 

1984: Ridley Scott directed "1984" when he was fresh off the set of Bladerunner, Advertising Age named it the commercials of the decade for the 1980s. The ad shows our heroine wearing red shorts and an Apple t-shirt running through an Orwellian world chased by storm troopers, at the end she throws a sledgehammer at an image of Big Brother and smashes the screen.

 

1991: Nike enters the game with their "Just do it" runner commercial and begins their advertising campaign as we know it today, ballsy artsy and just Nike all at the same time.

1992: Basketball superstar Michael Jordan plays with none other than Bugs Bunny. The toon and Jordan combo continued and later spawned a big screen flop in 1996, Space Jam, directed by commercial Director Joe Pytka.

 

 

1993:"off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothin' but net."

 

1995: Budweiser "frogs" - loved by the punters and adgrunts alike, when it appeared on the screen at the Clio awards the following spring it received a near standing ovation from the adcrowd. (yes, I was actually there since I was on the shortlist that same year.)

 

1995: Dennis Hopper went on a long rant for Nike. Play ball!

 

1999: With the Y2K bug nigh, Apple pays homage to Kubrik's HAL with this ad.

2000: EDS shows us with cgi and stunt-kitties just what that old Gillard saying really looks like, you know the one: "Managing creatives is like herding cats."

 

2002:The famous Budweiser Clydesdales pay their respects to the New York City skyline.

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