Super Bowl Commercials 2015: The Best and All the Rest

It’s been estimated that half of all Super Bowl viewers, a potential audience of over 50 million viewers, are only watching for the new commercials. If you happened to miss the big game, or just missed a potentially interesting ad while getting out some more snacks, here’s your chance to catch up. We’ve embedded all the night’s new ads (with the exception of a few movie trailers that have already been online for weeks) and arranged them in order of the biggest trends.

Best In Show

Budweiser’s Clydesdale-loving puppy from last year is back for this touching and adorable ad that has the production values of a Hollywood movie. Have you ever noticed that the best beer commercials don’t have any beer in them?

Celebrity Showdown

You never know who you could playing online games with. It could even be Liam Neeson!

Snickers continued their “you’re not you when you’re hungry” series with this Brady Bunch setup. It was a welcome relief from other commercials’ mediocrity.

As surprisingly funny as it is to see Mindy Kaling go through a car wash and eat large amounts of ice cream, we didn’t need to see the sunbathing bit. However, Nationwide gets bonus points for a cool song and a Matt Damon cameo.

Pierce Brosnan shills out for Kia:

Jeff Bridges is here, but Squarespace really needed to give him something better to do.

BMW wants you remember a time when The Today Show was big and no one knew what e-mail was. Doesn’t an electric car deserve something a little better than awkward anchor dancing?

Jennifer Hudson joined random people in an artistic setting for a sing-along of “Ooh Child”, but we’re still not sure why.

This is actually Kim Kardashian’s second appearance in a Super Bowl ad. The first was in 2010 for a line of sneakers that were later discontinued over allegations of causing falls and muscle damage. That is all one can say about Kim Kardashian.

Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman:

I get the point Esurance was trying to make with their Lindsay Lohan spot, but it was a little in bad taste. Their Breaking Bad spot was better, but you had to know about the show in order to truly get it.

Walk With The Animals, Talk With The Animals

Mercedes-Benz’s computer-animated version of The Tortoise & The Hare was everything you expected a Super Bowl commercial to be: cleverly animated, ridiculous, and full of cute creatures.

Avocados from Mexico offered up some cute CGI animals during their “First Draft” spot.

Mountain Dew’s Kickstart features some dancing creatures, for no apparent reason.

Sprint loves screaming farm animals.

Peace, Love, and Advertising

Coca-Cola had been airing cryptic commercials stating “aren’t you tired of hate?” for weeks leading up to the big game, all to hype up this spot, in which inspirational messages pop up after spilling the drink in a supercomputer. Don’t try this at home!

McDonalds surprised random customers by giving away free food in exchange for acts of kindness, giving us another great father and son moment.

Always wants girls to be confident: to run as fast as they can and throw as hard as they can. They also want to embarrass some silly-looking guys.

Toyota’s Amy Purdy montage set to the words of Muhammad Ali is inspiring, but not particularly memorable.

Dodge honored centenarians with their 100th anniversary spot.

Father’s Day

Dove for Men’s “Care makes a man stronger” was the best of the night’s fatherhood-themed spots.

This dad in the Toyota Camry ad is driving his heroic daughter to the airport.

I’m still not sure what the exact message was in Nissan’s “Cat’s In The Cradle” ad.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I have to give Chevy credit, their Colorado truck commercials weren’t dull and were actually kind of funny. Who wasn’t fooled by their “power outage”?

Paul McCartney was in the stands for the big game. Do you think he seen this “All You Need Is Ecuador” ad?

No More, a anti-domestic violence charity, offerred this thought-provoking ad.

This ad, designed to prevent dangerous household accidents, was just depressing.

Jeep’s “This Land Is My Land” spot is a bit of a rip-off of Coke’s international National anthem from last year, isn’t it?

Very Interesting, But Stupid

Budweiser’s “Up For Anything” introduced us to the concept of life-sized Pac-Man. While that is an interesting concept, this commercial is not.

Skittles’ arm-wrestling town was all special effects, but nothing special.

Mophie’s natural disasters was a lot of something for nothing.

Time-Wasters

NBC hyped The Voice‘s return with this spot, inspired by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It features judges Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Pharrell Williams, and Adam Levine, and like the show, it doesn’t spend much time on the unknown singer before them.

TurboTax gave us an alternate version of the American Revolution. All style and no substance.

It’s hard to believe Doritos’ spots were the winners in an online contest to make the best commercial. Oh, look! More cute children and a pig!

Worst In Show

Fiat’s Viagra-inspired ad was, to borrow a phrase from Jimmy Fallon, Ew! This ad is so icky, anchors on the Today show discussed how disgusting it was as a “trending topic” on Monday morning.

Also, Loctite had one of worst commercials of all time, period, with this montage of really bad dancing.