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Bud Light came away with a few gems this Super Bowl. The “magic fridge” spot is at least entertaining the first go-round, and present a little more sophistication in the humor than a bowling ball falling on a guy’s head. In real life this would be an electrical nightmare to rig up, and your neighbors would have to be pretty stupid to not notice you sawing through the wall to build your rotating fridge. This and many more complaints have been drafted into a letter to the Budweiser Corporation.

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This spot next gets an F. It’s for some kind of energy drink I think. I’m not even going to watch it again to remind myself the name of the product. If you’re going to have no other redeeming quality, at least don’t let us forget the name of your product. This spot is a predictable exploit of a large budget, I think they tried to hit such a wide target they missed everyone all together.

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Here’s yet another Bud Light spot that won’t go down in history as one of the greatest commercials ever but delivers its punch line and product visuals well. Contrasted with the other violently themed Super Bowl 2006 spots, the violence happens off screen, meaning the writers had to actually come up with a reason for the spot to be funny other than a piano falling on the guy and bear and killing them both. The spot, and every man woman and child on earth, are all richer for it.

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Ameriquest’s “Don’t Judge Too Quickly” campaign came out as one of the more critically acclaimed stars of the Super Bowl 2006 commercials. This is one of their best, though somewhat morbid thirty-second spots. I hate to even say out loud the failing of these spots since it’s such a wide failing of “super funny” spots it’s a little cliché to even say: “what was that commercial for?” Yeah so you totally forgot the name of the product.

The disconnect between product/service and the message is a little deeper than just forgetting the name of the company for Ameriquest though; the stretch between the catch phrase (“Don’t Judge Too Quickly”) and the services the company is offering is a little too much. Ameriquest won’t judge me too quickly? What does that mean? And the commercial is over. It seems like they filtered down their funny ideas to the best three, executed them very well, then after-the-fact tried to somehow make it sells Ameriquest. It could have just as easily been for FedEx, Outback Steakhouse, or the Dildo Outlet. Unfortunately even if something does an excellent job of being funny that doesn’t automatically make it a good advertisement.

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I’ve sectioned off these five Super Bowl ads that feature graphic and life-like violence. It seemed to be the theme this year to have misfiring comedic timing leading up to a severe head or spine injury. This first ad for Bud Light is one of the funnier violent ads, but the tackle at the end seems a little too much like the Michelob ad later in this post. By then end of the Super Bowl everyone had seen about ten different commercials featuring someone getting realistically hit or tackled and it got kind of old.

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This ad for FedEx features cavemen having a discussion cavemen shouldn’t normally have..Way to go guys, haven’t seen that one lately. This spot was laborious, and the only funny part was the dejected caveman kicking a small dinosaur. The funny moment was quickly ended when he was stepped on. Then it got sad. I am still sad.

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Moving on, in this ad we see a horrible head injury occur. And it’s hilarious! Well it might be if we hadn’t seen something fall out of nowhere and kill someone in another ad just a few seconds ago. Frankly I was expecting something to fall and completely kill everyone in every commercial by the end of the night.

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Here’s a man horribly tackling an innocent woman. Classic. I wasn’t really laughing by this point, you can only see someone body slammed “unexpectedly” so many times before you kind of expect it, or at least are not amused by it. I’m supposing the revenge hit at the end is to make amends for depicting a man violently smashing a woman into the ground.

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Here’s a guy hitting another guy in the face with his phone. Sprint used to do this to me when I was an unhappy customer. It pretty much accurately describes how their whole customer service thing works. If you’re not expecting this it’s funny once, but it uses sudden unexpected violence as a substitute for being clever (and for being original). More ads playing on different themes from this years Super Bowl XL will be up later in the week.