Super Bowl ads only made chuckles
published: February 03 2008 11:44 PM updated:: February 05 2008 12:27 AM

Super Bowl XLII fails to disappoint the avid ad watchers this year by bringing in some of our favorite celebrities and generating laughs. In addition to an amazing game by both teams this year, Super Bowl fans got the opportunity to watch over 100 commercials.

My friends and I sat down to watch Super Bowl XLII with one thing in mind: judge all the ads and make a list of our top 10 advertisers. So without further ado:

Falling in first place this year was from the Anheuser-Busch Company. Budweiser had some of our favorite ads: Budweiser presents fire breathing, the wine and cheese party, cavemen versus Budlight, and, of course, Hank the horse. Anheuser-Busch did an excellent job hitting its target audience every time with these sidesplitting ads.

Second on the list has to be Bridgestone tires. The in-house favorite consisting of screaming squirrels, rabbits, grasshoppers, owls, turtles, deer and women, oh my. The second ad really hit the humor and celebrity trend by using both Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons to bring on the laughs.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo hold third and fourth places, respectively. Together the two companies had five successful ads. Our favorite being a tie between the epic parade balloon battle between Underdog and Stewie Griffin for a Coke balloon and PepsiCo's ode to "A Night at the Roxbury."

Coca-Cola, interestingly enough, ran zero ads in the first half of the Super bowl and ran a humorous political ad centering on Bill Frist and James Carville in the second half.

SoBe and Glaceau's Vitamin Water tied for fifth and sixth place. SoBe's take on the ever-classic "Thriller" dance was hilariously successful. While Glaceau used celebrity appeal by spotlighting Shaquille O'Neal facing off against some super-competitive horse jockeys.

The "Dancing Baby" is back. Well not really, but there is a baby advertising for our number seven, E*TRADE. The first ad ran by the company was a simple Webcam video of a baby explaining how E*TRADE is simple and useful. The baby then proceeds to spit-up his lunch.

The number eight advertiser of the night would have to be T-Mobile. Their "myFaves" ad used Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade to show just how exciting having free calling to anyone in "Your Fave 5" could be.

FedEx and Doritos finish out the list with two hilarious ads you have to see to believe. FedEx quashes the idea of genetically mutated super pigeons and Doritos villainizes men in mouse costumes. Two goals every advertiser must have.

One advertiser worth mentioning was SalesGenie. I personally found the ads to be done in bad taste. Both ads centered on stereotyped ethnic salespeople.

All of the non-Fox Super Bowl commercials can be seen here.

Editor: Janna Rudolph

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