By Justin McKinney, Staff Writer
In every Super Bowl there are winners and losers, and the same can be said about the commercials that play in between the game, some gaining their own claim to fame over the years.
Every year there are commercials that make you laugh, some that make you cry, and some that just leave you wondering why anyone thought they were a good idea in the first place.
Two big winners from this year both belong to the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company. Is anyone really shocked though?
Anheuser-Busch has had some of the best marketing gimmicks of the last two decades, and five out the top six best-selling beers in America.
Kicking it off for A.B. was the Budweiser ad that had just the right amount of political spice to make you think a little more deeply.
The commercial depicted one of the founders of A.B. travelling across the Atlantic as a European immigrant and coming to America with the dream of brewing beer.
When he meets the other founder of the company at a bar, who is rich, the two decide to start a brewery together.
The commercial was moving in the way it graphically depicted immigrants’ struggles in coming to America and was very obviously a shot at President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration.
I loved it because not only was the story genuinely interesting, as A.B. is an American alcoholic staple, but it also sent a profound political message without being overly direct.
A.B. also did it again with a short and sweet ad for Busch Beer. The ad depicts the Busch Man in his flannel and blue jeans wading in a mountain stream with a can of Busch in hand.
Busch Man claims that Busch beer is as crisp as mountain air. As he opens his can a sound comes from it that sounds mysteriously like BUSCHHHHHHHH, which attracts the attention of all the animals in the forest around him.
There isn’t much to this commercial, it’s just over the top and makes you laugh. It was cheesy, it reminded me of some type of 80’s beer ad, but that’s why I love it.
Busch is a cheap college beer and takes itself about as seriously as you think it would by creating this easygoing and humorous ad.
The NFL also produced a great ad this year by dressing babies up as NFL legends from different teams.
The ad very subtly implied that children will grow into adults and do great things, and showed a bunch of babies dressed like Bill Belichick, Vince Lombardi, Marshawn Lynch, and others.
I was cracking up throughout this entire ad, these babies looked so goofy, and yet so accurate to the people they were supposed to be.
Amongst all those ads though some had to be bad and sadly there were a few this year.
Kicking it off for the losers is Cam Newton’s Buick ad.
It featured a weird concept where Newton played QB on a peewee football team.
It seemed funny at first, but then Newton started belly bumping with a bunch of eight year olds and it just looked strange.
Because of this ad I might never buy a Buick, not that I would have anyway though.
As you may have noticed Fast and Furious 8 made a few appearances in the commercial line-up as well. I hate these commercials more than I ever imagined possible.
The Fast and Furious series is made up of eight movies with the same plot eight separate times.
For some reason people keep seeing them.
Apparently they decided to make another sequel that no one asked for.
We get it, people will pay big money for a crapfest with a lot of explosions and fast cars. Now please stop.
Rob Gronkowski was also in a ton of ads for this Super Bowl. It makes sense because he’s injured, has a lot of time on his hands, and is one of the league’s most talented as well as beloved players.
But, seeing Gronkowski in ad after ad and then seeing him on the sidelines during the Super Bowl was like a cruel joke.
I know the Patriots won but it was really horrifying to watch Gronkowski on the sidelines and then look up at the score and see the Patriots down by 25 in the fourth.
As great as the commercials were, this year’s Super Bowl may have been the greatest of all-time.
It showed us that we should never give up despite the odds and that Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all-time, managing to pull his team from a deficit into an unprecedented overtime period, where he led the Patriots to victory.