The commercials are as big a part of the Super Bowl as the game and the Halftime Show — for many, they are the point; they get up during the game for bathroom breaks and come back and sit down during the ads. Unfortunately, I want both, so I basically sit down at 3 p.m. and don’t get up again for hours.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list of famous ads, but I got to thinking about Pepsi, and what a perennial sponsor they are — from its Cindy Crawford spot debuting the new logo, which she recreated in 2018, to its Michael Jackson extravaganza, to its contract with Britney Spears. When the brand moved on to Beyonce, it recruted Brit-Brit and Pink for a memorable gladiatrix event:
It’s a delight, and sort of sad to think that we will never see these three people performing together again. That would have been fun. Parenthetically, it’s weird to me that the first famous person we see here drinking a Pepsi is Enrique Iglesias, who plays the evil emperor. But don’t worry. He gets his. (It just further confirms my theory that Pepsi is for villains, and that if there had been a Diet Coke truck here, our three heroines would have chosen differently.)
That, however, led me to Google. Which in turn brought me to an ad I’d never seen before, starring Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett having a grand old time shilling Noxema with some double entendres:
And remember Ray Charles’s Pepsi years?
I STILL sometimes sing to myself, “You got the right one BAY-BAYYYY, uh-HUH!” Even though I do not believe it applies to Pepsi.
Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, never fails to make me giggle:
The Bud Bowl looks so low-tech now, but at the time I loved it:
A lot of people like the Hare Jordan ad with Bugs Bunny that spawned Space Jam, but my PERSONAL jam was Mike vs Larry:
Nothin’ but net.
Wendy’s got props for its “Where’s the Beef?” spot:
Ridley Scott directed the ad that introduced Apple’s Macintosh computer in the ’80s:
Baby Vader tends to make most people’s list of faves:
And no list is complete without Mean Joe Greene:
This is woefully incomplete. I didn’t even GET to Jason Momoa coming home and slowly removing all his muscles to reveal that he’s secretly a toothpick, before he nearly drops a weight that Lisa Bonet can basically lift with her finger. The beans thought that one was hysterical. There are also the Budweiser Clydesdales to consider.
What are the ads you can’t forget? ARE there any? Do any of these companies truly get their millions’ worth?
