Goodbye Superbowl

Give me a break—a break from all this Super stuff.

Super Bowl is over. So is Super Tuesday. So is Super Groundhog Day.

You know pholks, I survived all three and I could say I have fond memories of them all. I could, but I won't. I have always tried to tell the truth and to say memories of all that Super stuff were fond would be a Super lie.

I was rooting for the Patriots to win the Super Bowl mainly because I wanted to witness a bit of sports history – the longest NFL perfect season-but I really wasn't heartbroken that the Giants won. It was a great game in the fourth quarter and since I already had won a couple dollars in a small pool for earlier quarters, the tension wasn't too great.

Game-wise, the contest came darned close to being Super. But pholks, I gotta tell ya, my expectations for Super Bowl commercials were much higher than the results. I wouldn't put any of them in the Super Bowl Commercial Hall of Fame.

Sure, there were some pretty good ones, I admit, but no show stoppers. There were enough, however, to generate chatter over Monday morning coffee and afternoon iced tea breaks.

My favorites were PepsiCo. Inc. ads for various drinks, my perennial favorites the Anheuser-Bush ads, along with Coke and FedEx..

Pepsi's pre-game ad featuring the hearing impaired was one of the best. In case you missed it, the totally silent commercial featured two deaf men trying to locate the home of their deaf buddy, Bob, who had invited them to watch the game. They knew his street but weren't sure which house was his. Using sign language (captioned on screen, of course) the pair discussed the issue as they sat in their car on the dark street before honking the car's horn. Lights came on throughout the neighborhood and dogs barked. Of course, Bob's house remained dark allowing the guys to determine which home was Bob's. It was cleaver and well-done as well as being tasteful.

Budweiser seems to always top the creative and humor list of Super Bowl ads and this year was no exception. I really liked the one with the Clydesdale who failed to make the carriage team but achieves success after a year of training and coaching from a dedicated Dalmatian. The Bud Light ads, as always, brought some chuckles, especially one featuring cavemen who used the newly invented wheel to transport their Bud Light to a party by carrying it and the one where several guys used some creative props to smuggle Bud Light into a wine and cheese tasting party.

Another depicts a guy using his Bud inspired fire-breathing powers to impress a beautiful woman but gets carried away and leaves the lady and her dog a little a little crispy.

FedEx scored some laughs with a well-intended worker employing a flock of giant carrier pigeons to transport parcels with havoc-raising results. FedEx, of course, proves to be the better choice.

I did enjoy the Coke ad featuring a giant Peanuts character balloon winning the battle in midtown New York City skies over a massive cola bottle during a parade. It was an optic delight with the skyscrapers and such as the background.

Animals, critters and other various species seemed to dominate this year's crop of Super Bowl ads.

A family of sleeping badgers in a Toyota Corolla wasn't disturbed by cannon firings due to the vehicles sound-blocking construction but the driver's ringing cell phone inside the vehicle caused him an awakened badger confrontation. Dancing lizards were energized by drinking Sobe Life Water and a few other weird creatures, including monkeys, gyrated across millions of TV screens for various reasons before, during and after the game.

I was able to tolerate lizards, monkeys, badgers, cavemen and pigeons a lot easier than I did for the host of Super Tuesday-linked political ads, both regional and nationwide.

Groundhog Day resulted in what we should have expected, six more weeks of winter ending whatever concerns I may have had about that.

Too bad the darned little rodent couldn't have seen how the political winds were blowing that day and spared us from at least 10 more months of campaign ads.

That pholks, would have been really Super.

Miles can be reached at mshuper@valleyvoicenewspaper.com