The 5 Most Pathetic Super Bowl Commercials
January 30th, 2008 at 9:44 amBy Chris
The Super Bowl is Sunday and you know what that means: No, not football. That’s a given. No, Super Bowl Sunday is for the incredibly expensive commercials shown during the game. In fact, if you do the math, you’ll find a 30-second Super Bowl spot ($2.7 million) is more expensive than making a movie. Think about it, if it cost you $5.4 million per minute of the movie’s running time, a 90 minute movie would cost $486,000,000.
So, for the amount of money these companies are spending, you’d expect these production values to be really high and while that’s mostly the case, a well-produced commercial doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good—at all.
With that in mind, we’d like to present five videos that capture the essence of PATHETICALLY BAD SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS. You may find most of these are from recent years and rightfully so. As the American level of taste has depreciated, so has the quality of its entertainment. Commercials are no different, as you’ll soon see:
1. Puff Daddy’s Pepsi Truck
Dude, this is just terrible. Come on Pepsi, you are one of the biggest companies in the world. Can’t you come up with something a little better than a tricked-out delivery truck and Sean Combs? Surely you can.
2. Flomax
OK Flomax folks, when watching an important football game, guys (the intended demographic, don’tcha think?) don’t really want to hear about problems related to urinary functions… or semen decrease for that matter. Save this shit for the day AFTER the Super Bowl. It won’t be near as expensive.
3. GoDaddy
You know, I like half-naked WWE women wrestlers appearing before Congress as much as the next guy. In fact, I think we could use a little more of that in our commercials. What I don’t like are commercials that try to be risqué for the sake of being risqué, like GoDaddy’s domain buying commercial above. Not even the hot chick at the end could save this debacle. Now granted, this commercial was banned from the Super Bowl, but the attempt was made to use it, hence the appearance in this list.
4. Christopher Reeve’s Nuveen Investments Commercial
This was shown during the 2000 Super Bowl and guess what? Apparently, nothing boasted about in this commercial in relation to Reeve worked. He died in 2004. Bonus: The CGI effects makes Reeve look like the Frankenstein monster. Nicely done all the way around.
5. Britney Spears Pepsi Ad
Wow, Pepsi makes another appearance; this time with a Britney Spears music video masquerading as a commercial. Even when she wasn’t imitating the Amy Winehouse look, this girl couldn’t vocalize worth a lick. Does that even qualify as singing? In her heyday, Britney was someone that’s better seen and not heard. If they wanted to use Britney and the “sex sells” angle, they should’ve done it like this.
After going through all that, all I can say is I want my “Where’s The Beef” commercials back…
Stumble it!
January 31st, 2008 at 10:51 am
[…] bad I didn’t see this yesterday because it would’ve been apart of the Pathetic Super Bowl Commercials list. Apparently, it’s time for PepsiCo to stop spending exorbitant amounts of money on bad […]
January 31st, 2008 at 11:59 am
how can u put Britney Spears commercial on this list? this is when she was actually hot, and everyone from ages 8-88 wanted her. of all the commercials during all the superbowls, this made a list of 5? i guess hot chicks aren’t on ur agenda
January 31st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
That’s what I was trying to say… even when she was hot, she better seen and not heard. Her “singing” (if that’s what you call the moan/whine crap she’s doing) is abhorrent and Pepsi would’ve been much better served if they used her as eye candy instead having her sing.
Furthermore, I don’t want 1:30 music videos as freaking commercials.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[…] Five worst Super Bowl commercials of all time… courtesy of Intentional Foul. […]
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
You want to know what’s REALLY pathetic in the Super Bowl? Two things:
1. This year, FOX is including Ryan Seacrest in the pregame to promote american idol! “Expanded coverage” is really depleted coverage!
2. People actually watch the super bowl……..to see commercials! Anyone who does that is PATHETIC and CLOSED MINDED!!! I know some people might take offense to that, but it is true! Why would you brainwash yourself to see ads? If you don’t follow football, you can use those 3+ hours for other things, or WATCH THE GAME AND LEARN SOMETHING!!!! Luckily, when the game is going on (And the first part of halftime that includes game analysis), the super bowl is like another game: but more exciting! YOU CAN LEARN PEOPLE!!!! Sure, I’ll stick around a bit more often than usual during commercial breaks because more money goes into these ads, but my “getting a snack” and bathroom breaks will come DURING COMMERCIAL BREAKS!!!