With the Super Bowl, we hope for a gigantic game and for one where a team doesn’t impartial pummel the other in a landslide victory. These teams are the best of the best (either that or they’re lucky as hell), and they should keep each other on their toes all throughout the game. We also look forward to those Elegant Bowl commercials which can make bathroom breaks too risky to take. The best commercials that you can hope to see are usually on during the Super Bowl, and some are so damn hysterical that they destroy up upstaging the big game itself (not to mention the halftime show). Some years, the commercials are more of a reason to watch than the game itself, and sometimes it is the other procedure around. Then there are those rare times where both the game and the commercials are both great, but that is a rarity to be sure.

This year, we had one of the most exciting Super Bowls in original memory as the Pittsburgh Steelers managed to fight against the Arizona Cardinals’ big rally to win the game by only a couple of points. I love it when the games get this end right as the clock winds down to the final seconds. The game could go either way, and the come from slack win is always great to win in. While it doesn’t quite compare to my current Shipshape Bowl where the San Francisco 49ers managed to edge past the Cincinnati Bengels, this is certainly one of the more memorable ones I have seen in awhile.

However, this year proved to be the weakest for Super Bowl commercials. Many of them could have been aired through those weekly programs we love, and they would barely leave much of an afterthought. Even the best ones reminded me of so many others that were incredibly awesome to say the least. Thank god the game was a great one because it would have felt like a complete waste of a Sunday if it weren’t for that. Seriously, I can’t remember a more horrendously crappy year for commercials than this one. It was really more of a chance for NBC to pimp their own shows as much as they could since their ratings are way down in the dumpster.

Well, let’s look through them and see what was thrust on us from eager advertisers:

SoBe in 3D

We got to see some of the players from the Pittsburgh Steelers do some stupid ballet which was later interrupted by those rather creepy lizards who did their dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” last year with Naomi Campbell. I thought this one was lame and uninspired. While I love it when these NFL players show that they can laugh at themselves (we always here about the great they are doing for their communities), this feels like a one-note joke, even when it goes from classical ballet to a techno rap. In the slay, it just felt dumb.

As for the lizards’ commercial from last year to “Thriller,” I liked it better and laughed harder when they got a whole prison in the Philippines to do it. Who would have thought?

Pepsi Max – “I’m Good”

Ok, this one was kind of cute. We salvage to seek a bunch of guys secure harm in the most painful ways, and yet they come out of it on the other side saying, “I’m honorable.” Getting hit with a golf club, having a bowling ball hit you on the head, getting electrocuted and thrown serve 30 or so feet into a trailer, this is not your average everyday Pepsi commercial. Still, this is one that won’t stay in the collective consciousness for very long. Pepsi Max is Pepsi’s answer to Coke Zero, but with a commercial like this, it may go the map of Crystal Pepsi if they’re not careful.

I liked Crystal Pepsi…

CareerBuilder.com

This is definitely one of my favorites, and I actually laughed a lot at it. Some found the repetition of it (going back to the open and reviewing all that came after it) to be annoying, I loved it. I mean, it’s just like the regular routine of our day jobs, only exaggerated greatly for comic effect. I don’t know of many people who daydream about riding seals in the ocean though. Hitting small animals never did seem as ridiculously funny.

CareerBuilder.com also did one of the best Super Bowl ads of the last few years when they had all those corporate employees running away from a potential layoff, and they ended up running off of a cliff. This year’s wasn’t quite as worthy, but it came close.

GoDaddy.com

This is one of those commercials that ends in a cliffhanger as we look these teenage boys watching Danica Patrick about to take a shower for the fourth time in a day, and they end up putting one their teachers in with her. I never really bother watching the conclusions of these commercials online because I destroy enough time on the internet as it is. Danica does look really cute though.

Conan O’Brien and Bud Light: Swedish

This was funny for about a second. I like Conan O’Brien, and I like how it poked fun at all the big celebrities who do commercials overseas where they won’t seem like sellouts in America. But it fleet becomes stupid and not inspired enough to feel that Conan was giving us more than the average beer commercial, let alone the average light beer commercial.

I prefer the one from a while back where two guys have to do a game of rock paper scissors to determine who will get the last Bud Light. It turns out that a real rock is the final decider in this duel.

Mr. Potato Head/Bridgestone: Taters

He was funnier in the “Toy Story” movies as was Mrs. Potato Head. Enough said.

Bud Light: Meeting

This is another one of those commercials that takes place in a conference room in a corporate building where people are working on how to increase their sales. Then there’s the one guy who says the dumbest thing and gets thrown out. In this case, the guy says that they should stop bringing Bud Light to their meetings. Everyone gets silent, and you know this guy is on his way out.

I will say that the ending is very funny though. There’s not many commercials I remember where that one troublemaker ends up being thrown out the window from such a height. Some people just can’t buy a joke, but we can with this one. This was one of the better ones in retrospect.

Hyundai: Angry Bosses

Here, all the car company CEO’s are going nuts over the new Hyundai car that they couldn’t advance up with on their own. This is not entirely realistic considering the pathetic spot of the automobile industry at this point in time. It’s kind of hard to see them get all excited about a novel car when they have enough trouble getting rid of all their old ones.

ETrade.com

Ok, current rule, NO MORE COMMERCIALS WITH TALKING BABIES!!! EVER!!! This is a tired concept that should have died a long time ago with the “Look Who’s Talking” movies. Granted these commercials don’t stoop as low as those ones for Quizno’s which featured a baby less than a year old hitting on a magnificent model. Yes, I know babies are cute, but it doesn’t change the fact that seeing them doing adult things is just WRONG! Enough with the digital imagery showing them moving their mouths while voiceover actors provide them with dialogue. Seriously, enough is enough!

Doritos

This was one of my big favorites and one of the funniest. The one I am referring to is the one with the “crystal ball” which told one corporate employee if he was going to glean free Doritos or not. I was waiting for some cheesy special effect to make that little snow globe to life. Instead, it showed itself to be a baseball and a hammer all in one. Too bad it didn’t work as well with that other guy who hurled it at his boss’ nether regions. No promotion for you!

There was another good Doritos commercial with a guy who managed to change things around him with just one bite of a chip. Too abominable he ran out of them before that bus hit him.

Pedigree

I loved the beginning of this one! It starts with a woman looking like she is about to take her dog for a walk, but instead her pet is a rampaging rhinoceros who crashes its way through the front door. This one gives homeowners good motivation to find more insurance. The commercial fizzled out after an ostrich made an appearance, but that opening was classic!

Monster.com

This was clever, maybe even more so than the careerbuilder.com commercial. We go from an office with a moose’s head on the wall, and then we go to the other side to find that the head is still firmly attached to the rest of the body while a corporate flunky works underneath it. Not a very fascinating residence for anyone to be in. Short and clever.

Budweiser

Enough with the Clydesdales! Bring attend the frogs! Heck, bring back the lizards that got passed over for the frogs! I can live without Bud Bowl.

Movie Ads

Let’s try to go through these quickly:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Looks to be darker than the original. I wonder if Michael Bay is trying to make this one the “Empire Strikes Back” of the franchise.

GI Joe – It’s bad enough that they are messing up the “real American hero,” but this really looks like any other summer action movie. I hope it’s entertaining at least.

Land Of The Lost – It’s Will Ferrell playing Will Ferrell again, but this actually looks like it might be fun.

Up – Looks like another inspired concept for the brilliant folks at Pixar. Not sure this one will outdo “Wall-E” though.

Star Trek – Collected a little worried about this one, but this does look to be action packed to say the least. Let’s honest hope J.J. Abrams remembers what made the present so great in the first place.

Fast & Furious – Obviously not art house fare. This one does however bring support the original cast, so it might actually be worth a watch.

Year One – Could be very funny and cheesy at the same time. Harold Ramis directs Jack Black, Michael Cera, and Paul Rudd among others. Maybe this will be the sleeper hit of the summer.

Monsters vs. Aliens – This one might be fun, but it will also be further proof of how DreamWorks pales in the animation department compared to Pixar.

There are probably several others I could mention, but they don’t really stay in my consciousness mind long enough to merit attention. Ok, some of these commercials were better than I gave them credit originally, but even the best ones of this year kept reminding me of the brilliant ads from the past. That just took away from it even more. I expected more imagination and cleverness with these ads, and many of them felt like they could have gone on during any program, and not just for the Super Bowl.

We have come out of a stout football season that brought us more fascinating games than we could have expected, and it culminated with one of the most sharp Shapely Bowl games in current memory. The fact that these commercials were below par this year took away from it for me. Maybe it’s honest the curse of 2008 carrying over into 2009. At least we had Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to make up for it with a great halftime demonstrate.

Better luck next year…