Sunday, February 7, 2010

Can we quit talking about the commercials now? Forever?

Seriously. Has there ever been a CRAPPIER set of Super Bowl commercials? This has to have been the worst crop since people started paying attention to the in-game advertising. I have never seen such a bunch of unfunny and unappealing bunch of commercials in my life. Very few winners, very few commercials that were even likable. My votes:

Funniest: Denny's screaming chickens, which tells you how low the bar went tonight.
Best: Google's ad, simple yet nicely-done. Told a nice story and spotlighted the product.
Mentionable: For a long time, the only good ones were the first two. Bud Light with the house made out of beer cans, and Snickers with Betty White and Abe Vigoda playing pickup football. (Snickers appears to have come out the winner in polls according to Monday morning's news.) Bridgestone's killer whale was funny; the sock monkey and his toy buddies going to Vegas (Kia, I think) was funnier. The Coke sleepwalking safari one wasn't too bad. The VW "slug bug" commercial was one of the better ones. Funny, highlighted the product, and had a funny punch line with Stevie Wonder.

But it was mostly a night of bleh, meh and yecch. So many spots looked like they had some promise and ended up flat. A-B, how about a punchline for the Clydesdale ad with the longhorn? Instead they went for schmaltz, and it wasn't even good schmaltz. Did Coke commission a commercial with all the Simpsons characters but tell the writers not to be funny? Once again, not even good schmaltz. WAY too many commercials with unattractive, flabby people walking around without shirts, without pants or walking around in their underwear. That's not going to get me to buy any product, people. Those were crude enough, and then you had the Megan Fox one, which had a lot of potential until we got the thinly-veiled masturbating kid joke. We really need THAT from a commercial? And what was with all the suck-ass commercials that went nowhere, then basically said, we know this ad sucked, come see the long version on our website? Um, no, Mr. and Mrs. Griswold. Besides, I'm on a dial-up anyway.

And W, T, F?!?!? was Jay Leno doing in a spot for David Letterman's show, especially one allowing him to be completely one-upped? Who's the idiot advising Leno it's a good idea to do a spot like that? Never mind, we've all had enough of NBC's awful late-night decision-making the last couple of months.

And even on a night of unfunny, crude and/or mediocre commercials, there was a clear winner for Worst Commercial of the Night. Congratulations to the Boost Mobile Shuffle. Moronic lyrics, unwelcome thong-based humor, Jim McMahon and Mike Ditka making total idiots out of themselves, this one pretty much had it all.

I'd make more fun of Boost Mobile blowing $2.5 million on that crap had my own government not seen fit to idiotically do the same with our tax dollars for a Census ad that's already been on a million times. And still hasn't been funny. And witnessing the brutal dictatorial environmentalist attitude posing as humor in the Audi Green Police commercial, it's altogether possible the U.S. government bought that commercial, too.

Anybody who goes on about tonight's commercials at the water cooler tomorrow morning, feel free to punch them in the face for me.

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