The 10 Best Commercials of Super Bowl 54
A 30-second spot during last night's Super Bowl cost a cool $5.6 MILLION . . . or about $186,000 per second. So which ones were worth the money?
Well, a lot of them were teased or released beforehand. So there weren't a ton of surprises. But there were a few. Here's a quick rundown of the highlights . . .
One of the best commercials was the very first one of the night.
The NFL's "Next 100" ad actually blended INTO the game. And a ton of current and former NFL players had cameos.
It started with a kid running through various cities with a football while different players like Jim Brown and Joe Montana told him to "take it to the house." He even stopped at the Pat Tillman statue in Arizona to pay his respects.
Eventually, he showed up at the Super Bowl and walked through the tunnel . . . past Hall of Famers like Brett Favre and Barry Sanders . . . then it transitioned to a LIVE FEED of the game, and he came running out on the field to deliver the game ball.
(Here's the full list of players with cameos. Later, the NFL ran a pretty hard-hitting ad for their Inspire Change initiative, where ex-NFL star Anquan Boldin talked about his cousin who was killed by a police officer in 2015.)
Planters had a lot of buzz going in after they killed off Mr. Peanut in an ad last month.
And it turned out it was just so they could get in on the whole "baby-versions-of things-are-cute" trend.
The Super Bowl ad had Wesley Snipes speaking at Mr. Peanut's funeral. Then the Kool-Aid Man cried . . . a teardrop landed on the grave . . . and a cute, BABY version of Mr. Peanut sprouted up and made DOLPHIN sounds. (???)
Not everyone was impressed. But the hashtag "BabyNut" DID start trending. People mostly noted how it was an obvious rip-off of Baby Yoda and Baby Groot. (Careful! A lot of people also made fun of "BabyNut" for sounding borderline R-rated.)
Bill Murray starred in a Jeep ad that recreated a bunch of scenes from "Groundhog Day".
The Jeep people posted it online before the game, but not a lot of people saw it. So it got a pretty good reaction.
Bryan Cranston and Tracee Ellis Ross did a parody of "The Shining" to promote the new Mountain Dew Zero Sugar.
The very end showed Bryan standing in a hallway dressed as the two creepy twin girls from the movie.
A great spot for Rocket Mortgage featured a SCRAWNY and BALD version of Jason Momoa.
It showed him stripping off his muscles like a fake body suit. Then his real-life wife Lisa Bonet spotted him while he struggled to bench press a bar with no weights on it. The theme of the ad was, "At home, I can truly be myself."
Ellen and Portia de Rossi did an ad for Amazon that showed how people got things accomplished before Alexa existed.
Apparently we all just ordered people named Alex and Alexis to do stuff for us.
An ad for Oikos Greek Yogurt featured various NFL players' BACKSIDES while the song "Bubble Butt" played.
It definitely seemed to be targeting the wife demographic.
Sam Elliott and his very limber mustache had a dance-battle with Lil Nas X in an ad for Doritos.
Sofia Vergara was in an epic ad with a bunch of brand mascots, including the Old Spice guy, Mr. Clean, and comedian Rob Riggle as a superhero who crotch-thrusted rolls of Bounty paper towels at people.
It turned out to be an ad for Procter & Gamble, which owns all of the brands.
Speaking of epic ads, Tide did a series of commercials with Charlie Day, who flipped out after getting a stain on his shirt.
The cool part was that he and his stained shirt appeared in ads for OTHER products . . . Bud Light, Pepsi, the movie "Wonder Woman 1984", and the show "The Masked Singer".
(Check 'em out, here.)