Super Bowl commercials entertain

I will be the first person to say that I am not the biggest fan of football or even of sports in general. However, the hodgepodge of entertaining Super Bowl Sunday commercials, which at times seems to border on the downright odd and disturbing, never fail to capture my interest.

I have seen some pretty weird Super Bowl commercials in my lifetime but I would have to say that Mountain Dew’s “Puppymonkeybaby” commercial to promote their Kickstart drink was amongst the weirdest. The very idea of a “Puppymonkeybaby” creature running around on the two feet of an infant with the torso of a hairy monkey and a slobbery pug’s face is shocking enough.

Still, Mountain Dew took their odd creation further when the creature started to dance and chant “Puppymonkeybaby” over and over while three young men began to dance in a conga- line style behind the disturbing Puppymonkeybaby.

The way Mountain Dew chose to promote their Kickstart drink had me scratching my head in wonder and I had to sit back and reflect on what I had just witnessed. It certainly is not like any commercial I have seen before. Nonetheless, it does grab your attention without a doubt and you cannot help but to keep watching the hypnotic, dancing, chanting “Puppymonkeybaby.”

This year was also the tenth and final year for the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest where filmmakers can create their own Doritos advertisement and a chance to have it aired on Super Bowl Sunday. The winners are selected by online public voting from a pool of 50 semifinalists and three finalists.

The top winner of this year’s final contest was the Doritos ultrasound advertisement. In this commercial, a father stands off to the side eating a bag of Doritos as his wife undergoes an ultrasound.

Things begin to turn odd when in the ultrasound, the baby appears to be trying to grab at the Dorito chip. Suddenly, the mother grows angry, snatches the chip out of the father’s hand and throws the chip across the room. That’s when the focus of the commercial changes and the father and the mother are screaming and the cries of a newborn child are heard amongst the chaos, implying that even babies cannot resist the temptation of Doritos.

Aside from all the madness of both the Mountain Dew and the Doritos Super Bowl commercials, the question of whether or not the commercials actually fulfill their purpose to effectively advertise the products comes into play.

While at first it may seem like a contest of who can come up with the most outlandish commercial idea, the overall effectiveness of such commercials may not be all that crazy.

The ideas that companies come up with to advertise their products certainly are a bit out there these days, especially when it comes to the Super Bowl but the humor always remains.

You see such ridiculous commercials and it makes you wonder who in the world would come up with such a thing but you also inevitably end up laughing in the middle of all its absurdity.

Certainly, you cannot forget the horrifying image of the “Puppymonkeybaby” even if you wanted to and in a way, such a shocking image makes the viewer curious to learn more about the product behind such madness.

Even with all of the oddities that almost all Super Bowl Sunday commercial breaks contain, there is always at least a couple of commercials that appear to be somewhat normal or even slightly cute.

The Heinz “Meet the Ketchups” commercial where a stampede of dachshunds dressed up in hotdog suits run and pounce on the ketchup family, ultimately reuniting Heinz ketchup and mustard with hotdogs is certainly a heartwarming and pleasant commercial to balance out the weirdness of the horrid “Puppymonkeybaby.”

There is a bit of refreshing, simple humor to be found in the Snickers commercial where Marilyn Monroe transforms into actor Willem Dafoe as she grows hungrier and ultimately angrier, only to feel much like her normal self again as soon as someone hands her a Snickers candy bar.

Whether they are weird, odd, disturbing, shocking, cute or heartwarming, each and every Super Bowl commercial this year served their purpose to advertise their products in unique and unconventional ways that stick in the viewer’s mind.