What did you think of the Super Bowl commercials this year?

Boring. The E*trade babies made the day, but they do that every day!

I didn’t watch. :)

Duds.

The Star Wars/Volkswagon ad was sweet, and I mildly like the beetle ad, but there were no standouts for me. And some were just bad (Coca-cola!).

Seems to me they all did what everybody tries to do, and that is to rely really heavily on special effects and computer generated animation, rather than on the beautiful subtly of humans.

I thought Bridgestone (Carma) was clever.

I liked the Volkswagen beetle ad and also the Clydesdales playing football and they kick a goal. The one farmer asks do they do that all the time and the other one says no they usually go for two points.

I liked the Doritos add where the guy is taunting the bulldog hoping it will hit the glass and it smashes right through the door and flattens him.

I hate commercials that show adults acting in ways that we’d ground a kid for acting…

What a disappointment this year…

The one where the monkeys pull up so close to the guy he can’t get out of the car…it happened to me at a store but it was a really old man. (Same thing I guess).

@chyna That one was OK…

I liked the Bridgestone Carma one. And even though I don’t like Pepsi, I liked the Loved Hurts ad. And the Black Beetle one.

I’m kind of tired of Coca-Cola trying to convince everyone that a soda will save the world.

Oh, and I liked the Bridgestone Reply All one.

@chyna There’s an a-hole in my apartment complex that does that to me all the time.

Correction: I meant pug!

The resurrection Doritos ad was good. The Dorito dust ad was bad. The Western beer ad was clever, the home improvement one wasn’t. The Star Wars/VW ad was good. The Bridgestone one was good.

Didn’t get any, watched it on the BBC here in England Town.

I really enjoyed this one, and not much else.

Especially not the fucking terrible musical performances.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities Frill. I kept waiting for them to pan in on the Idol judges so we could all see the looks of horror on their faces!

I only saw about half of them, but the Doritos one where the guy sucks the cheese off the guy’s finger and then rips the pants off of the other guy to lick the cheese off of them was hilarious!

I didn’t see any of the ads either… watched it recorded from NRK1 in the morning because staying up from 23.30 to 04.00 on a Sunday night just isn’t in my programming.

I had seen the mini Darth Vader ad on you tube earlier this week and loved it. I could imagine the child in the costume being mine or a good friend’s. Just the sweetest.

@cazzie I saw that kid on Good Morning America. He is adorable!

@chyna he’s adorable OUT of the costume too? I’ll see if it’s on you tube. thanks.

I honestly thought they were pretty crappy this year. The Darth Vader VW ad however was one of the best commercials ive seen in a long time. Then again thats a pretty biased opinion since im a huge star wars nerd :P

Lame.

Nothing can top the Kathy Griffin Seirra Mist Wand from 2005/2006

Does it say something about the entertainment value of a sport, if the commercials become a talking point? ;-)

I liked that dumb GM truck commercial where the truck was Lassie, too.

I also like the Darth Vader VW ad, and I thought that the Chrysler Detroit one was very good too.

The Darth Vader kid is the son of an online friend of mine!

I loved all the commercials!

The groupon ones ran during the Super Bowl right?

I’m sorry – I can’t remember a more offensive set of ads. More offensive because no one stopped it, and even more that they were pushed and paid dearly for to get them aired at such a high-value time.

@iamthemob I was reading to day that many people have dropped their groupon memberships because of those ads.

@janbb – I was thinking about doing the same thing. You know what? Why am I thinking about it…

Update – This is from the groupon site:

Money is one of our most important natural resources. Sadly, thousands of dollars are wasted every year. Until now.
Finally, celebrities are lining up to spread the word about this important fight. Watch the informative videos below to find out how you can help save the money.
If you save so much money that you feel like saving something else, donate to the four mission-driven organizations below. Groupon is matching donations to ensure we can save the money, too. Also, join the discussion.

Wow – this was a serious misfire on their part. The commercials introduce causes that the celebrities are endorsing, and the idea is that money saved through the program can be donated to the causes easily through the site.

The commercials were apparently an attempt at a sort of meta-commentary on the commercialization of social issues. Absolutely friggin brilliant from a textual perspective – but how…in the world…these people didn’t realize that the majority of such dense content would be lost on almost everyone watching the commercials makes me think that these people need to put down their modern culture and media text books and actually watch the television they’re trying to utilize to figure out how it works in practice, and not just theory.

True dat, mob.

Correction: I was misinformed about the Darth Vader kid being the son of someone I know. Get the wrong end of a stick somehow.

@iamthemob Since when is celebrity an important characteristic?

@Nullo – It’s not objectively. But celebrity can be used to influence people to good acts.

If you haven’t seen the commercials, subsequent press, etc….I feel like talking about this part of the issue won’t make sense….have you seen all that?

I just saw one of the groupon vids on youtube. I thought it was a joke. Cuba Jr.(?) saying something about saving the whales, then promoting a groupon trip to a whale watching tour. I thought it was done tongue in cheek. OMG… what a disaster.

The guy who was in the Darth Vader commercial was interviewed today on the radio today and he was only, like 6 years old.

@iamthemob I am aware of the utility of celebrity spokesmen – I am just worried that so many people foster the idea that celebrity opinions are worth more.

@Nullo – The reference to celebrities was very, very particular to the Groupon issue. That’s why I asked whether you’d seen the commercial/site.

The use of celebrities in this context, however, turned out to be amazing in that it’s a parody of the very phenomenon of “celebrity cache” that you seem concerned about.