Terrible. Just terrible.

There were a lot of large rodents in the Super Bowl 2010 commercials. There was at least one beaver, two prairie dogs, and one ground hog. There were also many shots of men in underwear, and men being emasculated. Then several ads shared the theme of the faux-cheap production. I think the connection amongst these three themes is clear. I won’t condescend to anyone by spelling out the obvious.

As usual, Taco Bell did not fail to disappoint. Click here to watch Charles Barkley take you his own strange Willy Wonka boat ride through the magical land of refried beans and globs of melted cheese. Watching this I was reminded of Burger King’s strange attempt to simultaneously resurrect and re-kill Hootie’s career several years ago.

For some of the best of the faux-bad, Boost Mobile should be embarrassed forever that it made this. Gross guys, just gross.

And I really wish Godaddy would put their designs on their on-going campaign to bed. I assume it’s working for them but it is overkill on the lowest common denominator. Class it up, jerkasses. Why do I have to be the only classy thing what cares about what is classy and what isn’t classy.

Buy this home or go rot

I really love this spot, thought it’s so perfect I had to doubt it was for a real company. Cullman Liquidation Center does have a website, though my investigative effort ends there. I’m not buying a mobile home just to find out if these guys are for real. I do find it odd that their commercial is so well produced, and their web is so well..something else.. but it does continue to make the case that these people keep it real.

Take that free press

This well-done commercial calls attention to censor-mad Australia, whose government has apparently decided to wage war on free speech. Living in America, whose founding mission statement was freedom of speech, it’s hard to get a handle on such a similar nation taking such a dissimilar attitude to what we frequently proclaim to be the most sacred of all human rights.

Australia is fast on track to rival such nations as Iran and China for their stance on government censorship on the Internet. We’re sorry about goatse guys, really sorry, please come back from the brink.

This would be like finding out terrorists struck the World Trade Center years before 2001.. Oh wait

Behold this creepy ad for a voluntary swine flu vaccine from the 70’s.

While the creepiness is timeless, the relevance comes from the recent 21st century outbreak, of which it is impossible to not be aware if you are reading this on the internet.

Remember, transferring the disease is as simple as making eye-contact, so, much like encountering a gorilla, remember to freeze in your tracks and stare at the floor if you encounter a coughing individual, taking great care to not flare your nostrils.

Grapefruit.

This commercial for flu awareness, brought to you by the Southern Australia Council for Flu and Fast Food Regulation could not have hit the Internet at a better time.

Swine flu hysteria is all over the media, and this sticky commercial is spewing icing on the cake. Just watching this commercial will make an active hypochondriac ill for weeks.

This commercial is effective so I have little to add, except that, statistically speaking, we have much bigger fish to fry on the preventable disease front. But flu is just so damn sexy, it gets all the groupies.

Not sure how someone was offended by this, but ok.

NBC Miami reports here that Mexico was so offended by this Burger King ad for the Texican Whopper that they ran and told on them to their ambassador to Spain. I am supposing this is the international diplomacy version of running and telling on someone to your parents.

Though the article mentions ‘unfair stereotyping of Mexicans’ (I am supposing the pun about a little bit of Mexican being in the burger was lost in translation) the real issue appear to be the misuse of the Mexican flag.

The real news is that there is a country that apparently takes its flag more seriously than America. I mean we let Evel Knievel run around for years dressed like an American flag.

Here is a present to the Geico cavemen fans who frequent this site. I found this fortune cookie fortune inside of an ordinary fortune cookie. Two things are unusual about this otherwise ordinary fortune: One, it doesn’t predict the future; Two, it co-opts in broken English Geico’s ‘So easy a caveman can do it’ slogan.

I guess this qualifies as word of mouth or meme marketing, since I don’t think Geico has signed any fortune cookie deals. Though you never know.

You have entered a dimension of space and also time. So, ok, it’s kind of like your own dimension. But then all this is going on too.

Sorry for anyone who had problems accessing comments over the weekend, we moved to new hosting with new php permissions, so a lot of things broked. We believe nothing else is broked, but if you find anything, let me know and I’ll unbroke it. I know a lot of video links are dead, so you don’t need to tell me about that, that is just the nature of the YouTube century that we are all living in.

I did not bother moving the forums because no one was trying to use them except spammers. The forums are in heaven now.

I thought today I’d take a long creepy look at monsterpawn.com, a pawn shop in central Illinois. When you stare into Monster Pawn, it stares back at you. Really. Look at the commercial.

It’s worth looking over the other ads on their video page. If the rule with local advertising for businesses like this is to be memorable at least they are definitely doing that right.

Advertisements were indeed bland. It’s kind of shameful when the network bumpers are better than the actual commercials. “If your Conan last longer than 3 hours..call a doctor.” -Tina Fey.

Continuing our tradition of pointing out puzzling Super Bowl commercial themes, we present the following oddities (video provided by Hulu, so not available outside the U.S., my apologies):

Smashing through glass or other structures

Used by:
Bud Light
Bud Light again
Doritos
Pedigree campaign

Wealthy African Americans and Bling / Gold

Used by:
Overstock
Cash4Gold
Career Builder

The smashing through glass and buildings meme just seems coincidental, like the slapstick fad last year, or the talking animal Super Bowl fad of the year before.

The bling meme sticks out like a sore thumb when you watch the ads back to back. The Overstock ad isn’t really offensive. It’s curious though that the other commercials makers would still push the line and endanger being accused of using offensive stereotypes.

This isn’t overreacting if you will recall the tragic story of Just for Feet’s Super Bowl ad that allegedly killed their business. These businesses are potentially one slow news cycle away from some bad press.

Tomorrow we’ll post our most hated ad of the Super Bowl this year.