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Ask HN: What ever happened to the GOOD Super Bowl TV commercials?
- Mobil1 3y ago[dead]
- jjackson5324 3y agoI don't think they ever existed. Which Super Bowl TV commercials do you consider good?
- tamaharbor 3y agoBudweiser Frogs, Apple 1984, Cat Herding, Wassup!, Puppy-Monkey-Baby, etc.
- philomath_mn 3y agoPuppy-Monkey-Baby was a crime against humanity.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoPaper or plastic. Absolutely classic, even today. (If you don't remember it, you can find it here: https://www.superbowl-ads.com/1999-bud-light-paper-or-plastic/ https://www.superbowl-ads.com/1999-bud-light-paper-or-plasti...)
- philomath_mn 3y agoLol that was pretty good. I am sure I watched that Superbowl but didn't remember that ad.
- paulcole 3y agoThey’re still GOOD to the target audience. You just got older.
- sloaken 3y agoouch ... you make me cry. Of course I cannot argue with you on this.
- an_aparallel 3y agoi think the target audience has been conditioned to be happy with more innane entertainment. I frequently ask colleagues "what were you laughing about"- proceed to show me some tiktok meme...i sit blank faced...even after having it explained...still sucks. yeah - i'm "old" - but i'm a pretty funny guy...
- cableshaft 3y agoProbably makes me old also, but so many TikTok memes seem to be painfully low effort and unfunny. Mostly basic observations overacted and/or staged, from what I've seen, yet has hundreds of thousands or millions of views. First TikTok video when I went to the page just now (BTW, I went there looking to see if I could find a POV video example, so I could use it as an example): "POV You work at a restaurant, so you don't celebrate Christmas". 19 seconds of a woman you can barely hear because the acoustics in the restaurant aren't great, talking to the person filming her, who she's pretending is a stranger yet she clearly knows and staged this with ahead of time (since this is her TikTok profile), berating the person taking the video for asking if they're open on Christmas. 145k likes. I've encountered so many of these POVs lately (not even trying to, I only go to TikTok if someone links me to a video, but they even pop up while scrolling on my Facebook feed now).
- an_aparallel 3y agoeven clicking on a tiktok video outside the app tracks you...basically avoid anything related to it like the plague. Disgusting company, normalised by society. I will vehemently argue about any "positives" people try to claim it has.
- paulcole 3y agoNo generation has ever thought that they were pretty funny and then found the younger generation not funny before.
- sema4hacker 3y agoMy definition of a good commercial is if 24 hours after seeing it I can recall the product or service that was promoted. Tomorrow I'm most likely to remember that there is a new Reese's peanut butter cup.
- sloaken 3y agoI agree, I especially liked that they guy asked if they were still making the normal peanut butter cups. No need to repeat the debacle of 'New Coke' aka Pepsi.
- gnicholas 3y agoThat one and the Arnold Schwarzenegger one were pretty good. But I'm no more likely to buy either of their products as a result...
- dtagames 3y agoThe Apple one is truly painful this year. Very off-brand and expensive for the wrong reasons. A clear indicator of the changes between the Steve Jobs years and the Tim Cook years. And, as another poster pointed out, that's from the company that had arguably the best Super Bowl commercial of all time, for the original Mac.
- joenot443 3y agoI thought the Christopher Walken one was very funny. Has anyone seen that gag used in a commercial before? I found it charming.
- RecycledEle 3y agoThey were banned. Ask the Budweiser Frogs.
- mattbrewsbytes 3y agoI liked the April Ludgate + Ron Swanson one for Mt Dew. You'd have to be a Parks & Rec fan though to like it. I'd much rather see sitcom characters rehashed in silly commercials like that than reunion style shows - those always tend to miss the mark. A 30s spot with some witty lines is enough for me to reminisce.
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoI don't know. I think pop culture in general has become so meta and self-referential. The punchline of almost every single Super Bowl ad was the actors themselves. Not some witty line or scenario, but the actors themselves. Like "oh look it's that Friends actress playing herself pretending not to know that Friends actor, haha that's so funny and cute". So many commercials relied on the viewer knowing the actor, their personal life, and past work, as they'd attempt to highlight the irony of the actor being in some self-referential situation. It was so horrifyingly cringe, and I can't even remember a single product any of them were shilling. All I remember is some of the faces and a lot of the cringe.
- simonblack 3y agoWrong question. Should be: Whatever happened to GOOD entertainment?