100 Fun Facts About Super Bowl Commercial

Who directed Apple's dystopian "1984" commercial that introduced the Macintosh?

Ridley Scott shot the spot in England and recruited real British skinheads to play the pale, bald drones.

Which advertising agency created Apple's "1984" Macintosh spot?

Apple's board hated the finished film, and Chiat/Day quietly failed to resell the 60-second slot it had been told to unload.

Why did Apple's "1984" ad quietly air on an Idaho station on December 31, 1983?

To qualify for awards the ad had to air before the year ended, so the agency sent a tape to station KMVT in Twin Falls, whose operator had explicit orders to run it before midnight.

Apple's poorly received 1985 ad 'Lemmings' showed a line of blindfolded office workers doing what?

Walking off a cliff struck viewers as an insult to the very customers Apple was courting, and the company stayed away from the game until 1999.

In Coca-Cola's "Hey Kid, Catch!" ad, what does "Mean Joe" Greene toss to the young fan?

His game-worn jersey toss proved so popular that NBC commissioned a TV movie based on the commercial.

"Mean Joe" Greene, star of Coca-Cola's "Hey Kid, Catch!" ad, played for which NFL team?

The Pittsburgh Steelers lineman said the shoot took three days because he kept belching after downing bottle after bottle of Coke.

Coca-Cola's 'Hey Kid, Catch!' ad premiered in October 1979 during which broadcast?

Monday Night Football gave the ad its debut, but it became a phenomenon only when it ran again during the Super Bowl the following January.

Joe Greene reprised his famous Coke ad role in the 2012 parody "Stinky", made for which laundry brand?

Downy cast comic actress Amy Sedaris as the fan, who turns down Greene's famous gift because it smells.

The Budweiser Clydesdales were first shown to the public on April 7, 1933, to celebrate what?

The repeal of Prohibition came with a surprise for the brewery's head: his son lured him outside with talk of a new car, and a hitch of Clydesdales was waiting instead.

Which dog breed traditionally rides on the wagon beside the driver of a Budweiser Clydesdale hitch?

Dalmatian coach dogs once guarded the wagon and horses while the driver went inside to make deliveries, and they have ridden with the Budweiser hitch since the 1950s.

Which company has finished first in the annual Ad Meter poll more times than any other advertiser?

Anheuser-Busch won the poll every year from 1999 to 2008, a run that ended only when a fan-made snack ad took first place in 2009.

A 1996 study found children knew the Budweiser Frogs' slogan better than which cereal mascot's?

Tony the Tiger's slogan was known to about half of the 9-to-11-year-olds surveyed and the frogs' to roughly three-quarters, a finding campaigners cited in arguing that beer advertising was reaching children.

Gore Verbinski, who directed the first Budweiser Frogs commercial, later made the first three films in which series?

Pirates of the Caribbean was still years away when Gore Verbinski shot the swamp spot, using lifelike puppet frogs rather than real ones.

In the later Budweiser swamp ads, jealous lizard Louie hired what animal as a hitman to kill the frogs?

A ferret was the inept hitman, who tried to electrocute the frogs by dropping the bar's neon sign into the swamp, and failed.

Budweiser's "Whassup?" ads grew out of a short film Charles Stone III made with whom?

His childhood friends from Philadelphia had greeted each other that way for years before he filmed them, and he went on to direct the Budweiser version for a Chicago agency.

The original 'Whassup?' cast reunited in 2008 to endorse which presidential candidate?

Barack Obama got the endorsement in a two-minute sequel that Charles Stone III directed to show his critical view of the previous eight years.

The 1989 stop-motion Bud Bowl pitted Budweiser bottles against bottles of what?

Bud Light's bottles gave the ads a plot and an ending, which kept viewers guessing and even prompted some people to gamble on the outcome.

Eight hours of the Bud Bowl's stop-motion work produced roughly how much footage?

3 seconds was all that eight hours of work produced, because every bottle had to be moved by hand, a fraction at a time.

Budweiser skipped the 2021 Super Bowl, redirecting the ad money toward what cause?

COVID-19 vaccine awareness got the money instead, yet the brewer still bought four minutes of game time for its other beers.

The Herbert brothers' fan-made 2009 ad "Free Doritos" topped the Ad Meter, earning them a bonus of how much?

$1 million was a bonus Frito-Lay had added that year for any fan-made ad that finished first, and the brothers from Batesville, Indiana were the first to collect it.

In the tech firm EDS's 2000 Super Bowl ad, weathered cowboys drive a herd of which animals across the plains?

Cats, because the ad made the management cliche "like herding cats" literal, with ranchers who talk proudly of a family tradition of cat herding.

The 2014 Doritos contest winner "Time Machine" was reportedly produced on a budget of how much?

$300 was the whole budget for the ad, in which a boy cons a man out of his Doritos by luring him into a homemade "time machine".

Doritos' 2014 fan-made ad contest winner earned a job on which Marvel film?

Avengers: Age of Ultron was the job that came with the grand prize, which viewers awarded to Arizona filmmaker Ryan Andersen's ad by online vote.

GoDaddy's first Super Bowl ad in 2005 parodied what recent event?

The halftime wardrobe malfunction of a year earlier was spoofed with a strap slipping at a mock hearing, setting a racy tone the company dropped only in 2013.

Which racing driver became the long-running face of GoDaddy's Super Bowl commercials?

Danica Patrick's 2009 spot "Enhancement" was the game's most-watched ad on TiVo, which counted live viewers plus those who rewound to see it again.

GoDaddy pulled its 2015 ad "Journey Home" amid complaints it trivialized what?

Puppy mills were the complaint: the lost puppy gets home only to learn its owner has sold it through a website built with GoDaddy, and the company dropped the ad the day it was released.

E*Trade's long-running talking Super Bowl mascot, voiced by comedian Pete Holmes, is what?

A baby told viewers from the 2008 game on that if he could trade stocks online, so could they; E*Trade retired him in 2014 and brought him back for the 2022 Super Bowl.

E*Trade's 2000 Super Bowl ad, admitting "we just wasted 2 million bucks", had a monkey dancing to which song?

La Cucaracha played as the chimp danced off-beat in an E*Trade T-shirt, and the closing caption asked viewers what they were doing with their money.

At the 2000 game dubbed the "Dot-com Super Bowl", which company's ad starred its sock puppet mascot?

Pets.com spent millions on the spot, in which the puppet sang "If You Leave Me Now", and went out of business before the year was over.

In the 2010 Snickers ad with Betty White, which other elderly actor gets flattened at the end?

Abe Vigoda's cameo closed a spot that topped the Ad Meter, and that May, after a Facebook campaign, Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live at 88.

Snickers' 2010 ad starring Betty White launched which long-running slogan?

"You're not you when you're hungry" lifted Snickers from seventh place to the top-selling candy bar, by its agency's account.

Who played the towel-clad "Man Your Man Could Smell Like" in Old Spice's 2010 campaign?

Isaiah Mustafa's ad never ran in the game itself: it went online days before Super Bowl XLIV and reached TV just afterwards, timed to ride the post-game interest in ads.

Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" won the top prize at which advertising competition in 2010?

Cannes Lions gave it the Film Grand Prix for ads that, as one trade review put it, revitalised a deeply unfashionable brand through humour.

In Volkswagen's 2011 ad "The Force", a young boy tries to use the Force while dressed as which character?

Darth Vader's pint-sized stand-in, six-year-old Max Page, had never seen a Star Wars film because he found them too scary.

Volkswagen's "The Force" ad promoted which model?

The Passat starts on cue only because the boy's father secretly uses the remote control, after the dryer, the dog and a doll have all ignored him.

What let millions see Volkswagen's "The Force" before it aired in the 2011 Super Bowl?

A YouTube release days before the game meant the ad had been watched millions of times by kickoff, a strategy many advertisers have copied since.

Chrysler's 2011 ad "Born of Fire", starring Eminem, launched which slogan?

"Imported from Detroit" closed a two-minute portrait of the city, after Eminem told the camera from a theatre stage: "This is the Motor City, and this is what we do."

Which Eminem song plays instrumentally through Chrysler's two-minute 2011 ad "Born of Fire"?

Lose Yourself plays without its lyrics under a narrator's account of the city, and Eminem himself speaks only one line, at the very end.

Who narrated Chrysler's politically charged 2012 ad "Halftime in America"?

Clint Eastwood likened the car industry's recovery to a team regrouping at halftime, and Republican strategist Karl Rove said he was offended by what he took for a political message.

Which actor starred in Tide's 2018 "It's a Tide Ad" spots that hijacked other commercial genres?

David Harbour kept turning up in what looked like other commercials to reveal each one as a Tide ad, because everyone's clothes were perfectly clean.

Tide's first Super Bowl ad, 2008's "Talking Stain", promoted which product?

Tide To Go, a stain-removing pen, was the cure for a job interview in which the stain on the candidate's shirt babbles over everything he says.

Which Oscar winner joined Gordon Ramsay, Cardi B and Rebel Wilson in Amazon's 2018 'Alexa Loses Her Voice' ad?

Anthony Hopkins was one of the stand-in voices pitched to a doubtful Jeff Bezos, who played himself, and the spot barely beat an NFL ad to the top of the Ad Meter.

In Pepsi's 1992 ad, two boys watch Cindy Crawford pull up in a car and drink a Pepsi bought from what?

A vending machine at a dusty roadside stop supplies the drink, and the joke is that the boys turn out to be ogling the Pepsi, not the supermodel.

Which pop star fronted Pepsi's 2002 Super Bowl ad "Now and Then"?

Britney Spears had signed a multimillion-dollar Pepsi deal a year earlier, and the 90-second spot looked back over decades of Pepsi advertising before ending on her update of the "Joy of Pepsi" jingle.

In the 1993 McDonald's ad 'The Showdown', Jordan and Bird trade trick shots for what prize?

A Big Mac was the stake in an increasingly wild game of H-O-R-S-E, an idea McDonald's has remade with later generations of stars.

McDonald's 2010 sequel to its Jordan-Bird shootout featured which two NBA stars in a dunk contest?

Dwight Howard and LeBron James lose their lunch to Larry Bird, who had ruled out dunking in the 1993 original and strolls off eating the prize.

The 1996 film Space Jam grew out of a 1992 Super Bowl ad for which brand?

Nike paired Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny in "Hare Jordan", and a conversation between a company executive and producer Ivan Reitman sparked the idea of a feature film.

In Reebok's 2003 Super Bowl ad, fearsome linebacker Terry Tate is hired to tackle whom?

Slacking office workers get flattened for being lazy or making mistakes, yet by the end of the game only 55% of viewers could recall the ad was for Reebok.

Reebok's Terry Tate spots aired just once on national TV, yet the web films were downloaded more than how many times?

7,000,000 downloads came through Reebok's own website, which hosted longer Terry Tate films, and Reebok soon had him tackling a streaker in a spoof of a rival's ad.

Which company's 1977 Super Bowl ad showed a monk, Brother Dominic, secretly using a machine to copy a manuscript?

Xerox's "Monks" has been called the first viral ad, because viewers asked to see it on television again, and the company remade it 40 years later.

Master Lock's famous 1974 Super Bowl ad showed a padlock surviving a shot from what?

A rifle bullet tears into the padlock but cannot open it, a demonstration repeated for so many years that annual sales grew from $35 million to $200 million.

Why did Master Lock pull its first shoot-the-padlock commercial in 1965?

Viewers tried it at home, shooting their own padlocks and mailing in the results, so the idea was shelved until the 1970s, when it came back for the Super Bowl and stayed for years.

Dick Butkus told 1970 Super Bowl viewers that "plugging holes is my business" in an ad for what product?

Prestone antifreeze got a pun out of the Chicago Bears linebacker, whose job on the field was plugging the gaps that runners aim for.

Which future Charlie's Angels star "creamed" Joe Namath in a 1973 Noxzema ad?

Farrah Fawcett was a little-known model when she lathered the quarterback's face on camera, and the exposure helped make her a top model and then a television star.

What was the title of Monster.com's 1999 Super Bowl ad with children describing bleak office futures?

"When I Grow Up" had children deadpan ambitions such as filing papers all day and being a yes-man, then asked job seekers, "What did you want to be?"

Mountain Dew's 2016 Puppy Monkey Baby had the head of which dog breed?

Pug on top, monkey in the middle and baby below, the creature mirrored Kickstart's own three-part mix of Mountain Dew, juice and caffeine.

Puppy Monkey Baby returned in 2025 among a crowd of famous brand mascots in a Super Bowl ad for which company?

Instacart sent a crowd of other companies' mascots to deliver one family's groceries; Mountain Dew itself had already revived the creature in 2022.

Roughly what did a 30-second commercial cost at Super Bowl I in 1967?

$40,000 is the nearest round figure for a price quoted as $37,500 or $42,000, for a game two rival networks aired at once, because CBS held the NFL's television rights and NBC the AFL's.

Ram Trucks' 2013 Super Bowl ad set photographs of rural America to which radio broadcaster's speech "So God Made a Farmer"?

Paul Harvey gave the speech at a 1978 farmers' convention; for the ad, ten photographers were sent out to document American farm life to go with his words.

Which talk-show host cuddled up with Oprah Winfrey in a surprise 2007 Super Bowl promo for his own show?

David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey played a couple in love watching the game, and three years later his late-night rival Jay Leno joined them for a sequel.

Which newspaper runs the Ad Meter, the annual poll that ranks Super Bowl commercials?

USA Today began with focus groups scoring each ad live from zero to ten, then opened the voting to readers online.

Whose ad starring Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey won the first Ad Meter?

American Express won in 1989 by sending Dana Carvey to the big game with its card, while his fellow Saturday Night Live star Jon Lovitz made the trip carrying a Visa.

Which player delivered the first 'I'm going to Disney World!' line after Super Bowl XXI?

Phil Simms was paid $75,000 to say the line, and Disney paid John Elway the same in case his Denver Broncos won instead.

Coca-Cola's multicultural 2014 ad drew backlash for a multilingual rendition of which patriotic song?

America the Beautiful was sung by bilingual Americans in languages from Keres to Hindi, which Coca-Cola called a snapshot of the real lives of a diverse country.

Coinbase's 2022 Super Bowl ad showed nothing but what, bouncing slowly around a black screen?

A QR code, bouncing like the old DVD-player logo, led to a sign-up offer, and so many viewers scanned it that the company's app crashed.

Which comedian dismissed the wheel, the light bulb and finally crypto in a 2022 Super Bowl ad for the exchange FTX?

Larry David's character scoffs at every great invention, crypto included, under the tagline "Don't Miss Out"; nine months later FTX filed for bankruptcy, and the sceptic looked right after all.

Bill Murray reprised his role from which film in a 2020 Jeep ad that won the Ad Meter?

Groundhog Day itself fell on game day, February 2, so Murray wakes once more in Punxsutawney, this time with a Jeep and the groundhog for company.

A 2010 Focus on the Family ad featured which college quarterback alongside his mother?

Tim Tebow tackles his mother in a light-hearted spot that never mentions abortion, yet abortion-rights groups had spent two weeks condemning CBS for accepting it.

Fox rejected the original version of 84 Lumber's 2017 ad "The Journey" because of imagery of what?

A border wall confronts a Mexican mother and daughter at the end of their journey; the broadcast version cut it and sent viewers online, where the traffic crashed the company's site.

Dunkin's 2026 Super Bowl ad cast Ben Affleck in a 1990s-style sitcom spoof of which of his films?

Good Will Hunting became "Good Will Dunkin'", with Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Ted Danson and Jason Alexander among the sitcom stars playing out a very different version of the film.

Which 2025 Ad Meter winner starred a Clydesdale foal too young to join the hitch team?

First Delivery gave Budweiser its first Ad Meter win since 2015, and the Clydesdales won again a year later with a horse raising a bald eagle chick.

Which actor trains for his big break as a beer spokesman in Michelob Ultra's 2018 Super Bowl ads?

Chris Pratt prepares hard for the job in the first spot, only to be relegated to the role of an extra in the second.

What did 'The Bud Knight' complete when it debuted at the 2018 Super Bowl?

A trilogy of 'Dilly Dilly' ads ended with the knight riding into a battle on an errand of his own; the middle chapter had first aired during the conference championships.

After 37 straight years, Budweiser skipped the 2021 Super Bowl and gave the money to which organization?

The Ad Council, whose public-service campaigns since the 1940s include Smokey Bear, put the money into announcements of its own.

Which three dot-coms were the only ones left advertising at Super Bowl XXXV after the 2000 bust?

E-Trade, HotJobs and Monster.com were the survivors, and E-Trade's own ad that night sent its chimp wandering through a ghost town of dead dot-coms.

Which brand killed off its century-old mascot in a teaser for its 2020 Super Bowl ad?

Planters announced that Mr. Peanut had died at 104, sacrificing himself to save his friends in the teaser, and then gave its Super Bowl ad over to his funeral.

Which company parodied Coinbase's 2022 Super Bowl ad on social media the same night?

Meta Quest posted a copycat version captioned "Hopefully this doesn't break", which led to a virtual-reality Foo Fighters concert after the game.

Coinbase's 2026 Super Bowl ad "Everybody Coinbase" was a karaoke sing-along to a hit by which group?

Backstreet Boys' "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" ran with its lyrics on screen, four years after the company's first Super Bowl ad drew so much traffic that its app crashed.

Which comedian's 2012 Old Milwaukee Super Bowl ad aired only in North Platte, Nebraska?

Will Ferrell had been fronting a regional campaign for the beer, so its Super Bowl ad was bought in a single market, the most local of local buys.

Which two presidential campaigns each paid about $10 million for ads in Super Bowl LIV in 2020?

Trump and Bloomberg bought the time, and Fox surrounded their ads with promos for its own shows so that no other advertiser's spot ran beside them.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent kept tripping over the company slogan in which insurer's 2024 Super Bowl ad?

State Farm cast him as an agent in a fake action blockbuster, and the spot topped the Ad Meter poll after a co-star took over the troublesome line.

Which country star reworked one of her biggest hits for Squarespace's 2021 Super Bowl ad about side hustles?

Dolly Parton flipped "9 to 5" into "5 to 9", a salute to people building side businesses once the day job ends.

Which music legend drove a Jeep to a small Kansas chapel in the 2021 Super Bowl ad 'The Middle'?

Bruce Springsteen filmed at the U.S. Center Chapel near Lebanon, Kansas, beside the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states.

Which 1996 blockbuster's Super Bowl ad started the trend of launching big film campaigns at the game?

Independence Day was in post-production when Fox paid $1.3 million for the spot, and its success in theaters made other studios copy the idea.

Anna Kendrick helped which famous toy bid on a home in Rocket Mortgage's 2022 Super Bowl ad?

Barbie has to beat rival bidders to her Dream House in the spot, a joke about the grim housing market that won the Ad Meter poll.

Ram Trucks' 2018 Super Bowl ad 'Built to Serve' used part of a 1968 sermon by which civil rights leader?

Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "Drum Major Instinct" sermon, about the virtue of serving others, exactly 50 years before the day the ad aired.

In a 2018 NFL Super Bowl ad, Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. recreated a scene from which film?

Dirty Dancing supplied the scene for the league's spot "Touchdown Celebrations to Come", which several teaser ads had built up to.

Which actor lip-synced Missy Elliott opposite Peter Dinklage in a 2018 Super Bowl ad for Doritos and Mountain Dew?

Morgan Freeman mouthed "Get Ur Freak On" while his rival took a Busta Rhymes verse, in a joint spot titled "Doritos Blaze vs. Mtn Dew Ice".

In Budweiser's 2014 Super Bowl ad 'Puppy Love', which breed of puppy befriends one of the Clydesdales?

A Labrador Retriever puppy starred in the story, which played out to the Passenger ballad "Let Her Go".

Apple's board disliked the '1984' Super Bowl ad, so who offered to pay half the airtime himself?

Steve Wozniak liked the film so much that he showed copies around, and he made the offer on condition that Jobs paid the other half.

Matthew Broderick spoofed Ferris Bueller's Day Off in a 2012 Super Bowl commercial for which carmaker?

Honda made the spot to sell its CR-V, and a teaser that surfaced before the full ad set off rumors of a film sequel.

Which bull terrier, billed as a party animal, made his national TV debut in a 1987 Super Bowl beer commercial?

Spuds MacKenzie was played by a female dog named Honey Tree Evil Eye, known as Evie for short.

In Budweiser's 2002 Super Bowl tribute to September 11 victims, the Clydesdales cross which landmark?

The Brooklyn Bridge carries the horses toward the Manhattan skyline, where they stop and bow; Budweiser aired the original only once and reworked it for the tenth anniversary in 2011.

Which electronics chain's 2014 Super Bowl ad had 1980s pop culture icons empty its store into a DeLorean?

RadioShack titled the spot "The '80s Called", and the raid on its shelves plays out to Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend".

Which insurer's 2015 Super Bowl ad 'Boy' featured a child explaining why he would never grow up?

Nationwide had the boy reveal he had died in a preventable household accident; its marketing chief, who defended the ad, left the company that spring.

Which deals website's 2011 Super Bowl ad was accused of using the plight of Tibetans to sell its service?

Groupon then stayed away from the game for seven years before it bought another Super Bowl spot.

A surprise 2018 Super Bowl ad announced which Netflix sci-fi film would start streaming right after the game?

The Cloverfield Paradox was kept so quiet that its own cast learned the title and the launch plan on a conference call that morning.

Which TV star led the one-off stage musical Skittles mounted in 2019 instead of a Super Bowl commercial?

Michael C. Hall starred in the show, which had a single performance at a New York theater on Super Bowl Sunday and was never televised.

Which shoe retailer sued its own ad agency for $10 million over the 1999 Super Bowl commercial it had made?

Just For Feet accused Saatchi & Saatchi of malpractice, but filed for bankruptcy that November and the lawsuit was dropped.

Which candy brand's 2023 Super Bowl campaign pretended Maya Rudolph had renamed the product after herself?

M&M's became "Ma&Ya's" candy-coated clams in the stunt, which followed an announcement that its cartoon spokescandies were on indefinite pause.