Among the enduring questions of the Super Bowl is how America’s leading corporations can drop enough money to buy a Beverly Hills mansion and still go to air with a turkey: ads that are by turns dull, predictable, tone-deaf, or just weird. Ask AI this question and you’ll be told that companies feel immense pressure to get attention, be funny, stress name awareness, and not offend anyone.
Of course, one viewer’s clunker of an ad might bring another to tears—so here’s a reminder that these are the editors’ picks alone. Now for the list.
Make America Healthy Again
It was a nice bit of casting that put Mike Tyson in this ad for MAHA Center: he’s a redeemed figure with a redemptive message: America, stop eating junk food. (“Processed food” is the argot here.) It’s also a nice bit of courage to air an ad like this in a game where snacks and soda have been the big spenders for decades. The problem with Tyson’s eat-healthy message isn’t really the message, but the way he delivers it: His shaming of his former self turns into the present-day shaming of others. After calling Americans “obese, fudgy people,” the former heavyweight champion recalls weight soaring to 345 pounds—days when he was “fat and nasty” and so full of “self-hate” that “I wanted to kill myself.” We’re glad you didn’t, Mike, but body shaming won’t do, nor does treating suicide as a casual comment.
Svedka
For the record, the original fembots appeared in ’70s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man, where the evil lady robots’ flesh masks would slip off to reveal the creepy, circuit-board faces beneath. In this sense, Svedka is at least respecting tradition: the vodka brand’s fembot is also creepy as hell. Of course, this time out, she’s AI generated — the whole ad is — and joined by Brobot, whose chest cavity opens to reveal a third arm. Lovely! Brobot’s cocktail also spills through the bottom of his mandible because AI apparently forgot to give him an esophagus. Charming! There’s no disputing that the memorable, if oversexualized, fembot — who reigned from 2005 to 2013 — was a hit for Svedka. Too bad AI can’t restore the past as it produces unnerving ads for the present.
