Meet the New Superbowl Ads! Same as the Old Superbowl Ads!

Another batch of opinions, hastily posted by somebody who wasn't all that invested in the game. (Dammit, Bill!) This may not be the most coherent post in the world, since it's almost quarter of two in the morning now, but here goes:

"The Last Airbender" teaser - Uh... eh. I think I've made my opinions on the prospects of a live-action "Avatar: the Last Airbender" movie perfectly clear by now and this teaser didn't really change anything. What strikes me as odd is the fact that, had I tuned in a minute later I would have missed it entirely.

Boostmobile Shuffle - OK, this one got a laugh out of me. For those of you who are to young to get the reference, enjoy the very first time I realized that athletes should never sing. Ever.

Doritoes and Budweiser - Man, their commercials this year were either just plane weird or boring. Doritoes in particular; it looked like they were using the ideas from their contest a while back that came in a distant second.

"Robin Hood: Prince of Some Stuff" - "Gee, Homer, that's a good idea but I think they've already made movies based on A Christmas Carol." "Yeah, well, what about Robin Hood?"
On the other hand, I am hoping they make this movie into another "EXCITING cereal".

"Wolfman" - Team DelToro!!!

Monster.com Beaver - I like the puppetry, but this is a good example of an ad that is really elaborate but doesn't make any damn sense. The Budweiser Bridge ad was like this too. The ur-example of this kind of Superbowl ad comes from 1997. (Bonus: Two or three instantly-dated references for the price of one!)

GoDaddy.com - This may be the greatest and best web-hosting service in the entire Internet, and all most people associate them with are these "to hot for TV" ads. Good jarb ad execs.

Coke Simpsons - Yaaaay!!! I feel like I ought to comment more on this ad as it's the only memorable animated ad. It's wikkid late. I don't want to.

Career Builder and Dockers - To ads in a row with guys in their underwear. Good luck telling them apart.

Teleflora - Hey, I remember this from last year!

"Alice in Wonderland" and "Tru TV Groundhog Day" - I must have mentioned somewhere on this blog that the deepest depth of the Uncanny Valley is inhabited by those staples of Superbowl ads, CGI Babies Who Do Things Normal Babies Don't Do. Well, I was wrong. The real inhabitants are People With Giant CGI Heads (or Normal-Sized Heads On Little CGI Bodies, it's hard to tell).

Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter - And I've given so much attention to the history of the Disney/MGM or Hollywood or whatever they're calling it now Studios in Walt Disney World that I feel like I must have discussed the equally strange history of Universal Studios Florida as well. This ad reminds me of the seriously trippy ads used to introduce the park in the first place. I don't think Wizarding World will be open by the time I get to Florida next month (more on that later), but having visited the spot where I think it's going, it's a little hard to believe that this is going to be more elaborate than a retheming of the Lost Continent part of Islands of Adventure.

Dr. Pepper Little Kiss - Ugh. Just... ugh.

"Prince of Persia: the Color Orange!" - With the memory of what happened after "Pirates of the Caribbean" fresh in my head, let me say this: I don't want little girls and their moms suddenly saying they've "Always been a Jake Gyllenhaal fan!" You sit through "The Good Girl" and "The Day After Tomorrow" just for him and then maybe we'll let you in the fan club. Maybe.

HomeAway.com - Here's a depressing trend for you. Commercials for commercials. As in, you had to go online to watch the full version of this. Bah.

Dennys screaming chickens - And here's the most irritating and most impossible to like commercial this year.

"The Crazies" - Interesting and creepy ad for what appears to be an entirely unremarkable thriller. Funny thing is, I would have expected to see an "Iron Man 2" teaser instead.

Google Paris Romance - Awwwwww... See now, this is how you do it.

EDIT: Reviews of ads I have not mentioned can be found at the Onion AV Club. It's funny how the blatant misogyny and anti-intellectualism, especially of the Bud ads, didn't immediately register with me. Then again, I remember when every single beer ad felt like that Duff beer "down with sexism" ad from an early episode of "The Simpsons" (still brilliant but YouTube has sadly failed me).

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Sketch of the day!

I'm also selling a set of ACEOs on Ebay this week, just to see how they do.

Superbowl Commercials = Serious Business

Therefore, I shall now give my opinions of the various ads that entertained me (or not) during the game (which, being a chick, I wasn't all that emotionally invested in):

"G.I. Joe" trailer - Eh. Actually, I think I'll see if I can rent the "G.I. Joe" animated movie. I have a feeling it'll be better than this big live-action Hollywood version. Now, why would I think that?

"Transformers: Revenge of the Sith Fallen" trailer - Oh yeah.

Pepsi - You are not Bob Dylan, Will I. Am! Shrek is not Gumby! There is nothing about this ad that does not make me angry!

Budweiser - The horses in love one was very nice. The "fetch" game, not so much.

"Land of the Lost" trailer - It doesn't look that funny, but it's bound to be better than the 1991 revival. (I can't be the only one who remembers if. Observe.)

"Star Trek" trailer - It's enough to say that I'm getting excited about an odd-numbered "Star Trek" movie. And did Kirk just run into a smaller Clover?

"Up" trailer - It's Pixar and it involves a cranky old guy and the plateaus of South America. I am sold. But by the way, not one single Annie Award for "Wall-E"? Seriously?
Teleflora - Um... This flower delivery company knows that flowers are the reproductive parts of a plant, right? Because I do, and with that in mind, this commercial just looks wrong.

Cheetos - When did Chester Cheetah turn into a jerk-ass?

ZOMG 3-D COMMERCIALS WTF LOLERCOPTER!!!
OK, I was lacking in the 3-D glasses department so I have no idea if they were better with them, but the "Monsters V. Aliens" trailer didn't look terrible without them. The movie itself just doesn't look all that interesting to me though. And the So-Be ad after it started out cute, got confusing in the middle, and ended with some premium nightmare fuel.

"Heroes" - It's always fun to be reminded that the stars of "Heroes" are fans themselves, so I liked the playful football ad.

Nerf Swords - Every year, there is one commercial that stands out because it looks so out of place. I'm sure all the LARPers out there are excited about this. I do not doubt that there are LARPers who watch the Superbowl (most LARPers are male) it still seems odd.

"Some-Other-Verb-Besides-Escape To Witch Mountain" trailer - Yes, Disney is revisiting the Witch Mountain series for no good gorram reason. With the Rock. Yeah. (Writes a note to add the original "G.I. Joe" and "Escape to Witch Mountain" movies to her Netflix queue...) Oh, hey, remember how in the original, we didn't learn that the two kids were aliens until the very end? Yeah.

Coke - I loved the Coke bugs! Obviously, somebody liked their "Minuscule", but it was still so cute. Best of all, the insects were allowed to be cute on their own terms; they weren't humanized too much. (See the aforementioned SoBe commercial to see how even slight anthropomorphism of otherwise realistic CGI animals can go horribly, horribly wrong.)

Coke Zero - On the other hand, this "LOL, we'll pretend we're angry at ourselves for stealing our own recipe" ad campaign was not, is not, and never will be funny.

Hulu - It's nice that they're hosting all these ads but... WTF Alec Baldwin? Also, the mammalian brain is already of a fairly squishy consistency. I will invite the reader to accept, without questioning, why I know this.
(OK, think high school, anatomy class, and a dozen female students in their early teens being traumatized when the trailer for "Babe" began running the same week we started...)

Legal Seafood - At this point, we're getting into the local ads at the end of the game. Anyway, this ad features the sounds of Presidents slurping clam chowder. This is what the word "squick" means.

Stop N Shop - Nothing much to say here but, "Yay! They are using animated ads again!" (They had a cute and memorable one around 1989-ish. Sadly, YouTube has failed me.)

And those are about the only ads that made an impression on me. How about some cel-shading (click for big as usual):