The Super Bowl is in the books, and that means it’s time to close the door on this year’s crop of ads, too. We assessed each of them as they aired last night, but here’s the version of the biggest (not biggest) hits: the best and the worst of what we saw last night.
The best
Tide
Your verdict on how you liked these Super Bowl ads depended largely on how you like your nostalgia served: remixed or just reheated. Jason Alexander’s hooded sweatshirt was a clever fit, and defining it with the theme “The Greatest American Hero”, also known as George Costanza’s answering machine jingle, means it’s a big hit for people who remember the that was an answering machine.
Amazon Alexa
The Super Bowl ads have moved away from objectifying sexy actors and models in the past decade, but I’m pretty sure that many viewers have had absolutely no problem with Michael B. Jordan shirtless and bathed in water as Alexa personified.
Rocket Mortgage
Tracy Morgan is a national treasure and I guarantee that any brand that only trains a camera on it for 60 minutes of any day will have more than enough genius to fill five Super Bowl commercials next year.
Lemonade Bud Light Seltzer
Lemons raining down from the sky, ruining everything we love and forcing us into the house is a surprisingly accurate metaphor for a major international beverage company.
Jimmy John’s
The idea of the King of Cold Cuts declaring war on Jimmy John’s in a Scorsese-style montage is so strange that it deserves more love.
Worse
Oatly
I imagine the discussions at Oatly HQ went something like this:
CEO Oatly: I want to buy a Super Bowl ad.
Subordinates Oatly: Hmm … that’s a lot of money …
CEO Oatly: And I want to star in that. And sing.
Oatly subordinates: Sir, we heard you karaoke at company meetings, do you think it’s a good idea-
[One week later]
CEO Oatly: I want to buy a Super Bowl ad.
Newly hired subordinates from Oatly: Absolutely! Whatever you say, sir! And we can say, you have a beautiful voice to sing!
Yes. This has been an all-time shrinkage.
Uber Eats
As someone who, unlike Cardi B, lived the first iteration of Wayne’s World, I can say with certainty that a cute Saturday Night Live skit expired long before the second film, resurrecting the corpse of that idea to an advertisement in 2021 is like support old artists for halftime shows. You think you want it, but what you want is the version of your memory, not the one you have now. I don’t envy Wayne and Garth for receiving that sweet Super Bowl coin, but that execution made me want to throw up.
Cheetos
Ashton Kutcher-Mila Kunis Cheetos’ announcement with Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” was not a bad announcement in itself. It’s just that all you need to say is “Ashton Kutcher-Mila Kunis announcement set to Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ and you know exactly what’s going to happen, beat for beat. And so it was.
Klarna
So … what exactly was an ad for? Mini Maya Rudolphs on horseback with weird CGI … sharing payments or something. I know that criticizing an ad for being too exaggerated is exactly the opposite of the judgment I made in the Cheetos ad for being painted by numbers, but still … you need to give us something else to work with, Klarna.
LYRIQ / ScissorHandsFree
It is not enough to show the actors – well, one of them, at least – from a beloved film from the 90s and restart the second role; you have to give them more to do than that. Given that the original “Edward Scissorhands” was a mockery of the stupendous consumerism that Super Bowl ads celebrate, it was a sad and longing disappointment to see little Edgar shilling for … Cadillac.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @jaybusbee or contact him at [email protected].
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