Greatest Super Bowl Commercials

For people who aren’t sports fans, the Super Bowl isn’t about winning or losing. It’s not about which player is named MVP or which team hoists the Lombardi trophy overhead at the fourth quarter’s end. It’s not about which coach is submerged in a Gatorade bath. It’s about one thing, and one thing only: the commercials. Without the commercials, the TV airing the Super Bowl may as well be turned off, or worse, turned to Lifetime.

Super Bowl commercials are expensive to air; a 30-second spot in last year’s game cost $2.5 million. This makes them great: advertisers don’t want to waste their money so they burn more midnight oil, flow more creative juices, and order much more Thai food for those office all-nighters. Some of these advertisers succeed with brilliant commercials, others leave us scratching our heads and asking, “Seriously?” The good, the bad, and the ugly all find a way into our television sets on Super Bowl Sunday. The following is a list of five of the best commercials generated over the years.

Apple “1984”: A commercial that aired in, well, 1984, this Apple commercial is still revered as one of the greatest of all time. A parody of George Orwell’s novel about a man living in a world marked by totalitarianism, this ad was directed by Ridley Scott of Blade Runner fame. IBM plays the roll of “Big Brother” - a euphemism used for “dictatorship” in Orwell’s novel - and is featured in the commercial as a giant TV screen that rattles on to an audience of emotionless drones. Out of nowhere, a hip-looking woman enters the room and throws the new Macintosh into the screen, shattering it in the process. The voiceover says, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

McDonald’s “Showdown”: In 1993, this commercial featured a game of “call your shot Horse” between two of basketball’s greats: Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. The winner won none other than a Big Mac. Each shot was followed by an even more spectacular shot and preceded by the catch phrase, “nothing but net.” As the players dueled, hitting shots off the rafters, and off of floors, it became clear that no winner was going to be decided. The commercial ends with Jordan and Bird sitting outside on top of a building as Jordan tells Bird, “Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net.”

Article Author: J Jordan

Jennifer Jordan is an editor and staff writer for http://www.verbaladvantage.com. An English major and professional writer, she spends her days correcting grammar and wondering why she's unpopular.

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