The Best Super Bowl Commercials of All Time

In 1984, Apple was preaching about the relative uniformity of competing computer companies like IBM. This commercial—dubbed “1984" after George Orwell’s novel—is about bucking trends and refusing to conform to the status quo. It introduced the Apple Macintosh computer, an iconic piece of hardware that helped kick off the personal computer revolution and move desktop publishing into the mainstream.

The ad was created by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow at advertising agency Chiat/Day, and directed by Ridley Scott, the auteur behind films including Alien and Blade Runner. Apple spent $1.5 million on it, but it was so edgy and different the company’s board of directors initially did not want to run it; Steve Jobs had to use all his Reality Distortion Field powers to get them to approve.

I remember watching this ad for E*Trade at a friend’s house in 2008, not realizing the recession that was about to happen. Anyway, the E*Trade baby made it out just fine. He was invited back last year to reprise his role for another Super Bowl spot.

This one’s cheating a little bit. The Budweiser Clydesdales are known for a whole string of commercials, dating back to 1986 and referencing an even older, post-Prohibition marketing stunt that left the “strong and proud” breed of horses inextricably linked with the beer brand. That said, the horses have occasionally been subbed out for other, perhaps more honest animal mascots, which we’ll touch on later.

I vaguely remember watching this ad in 1999, not realizing it was an outright allegory for capitalism. (I was really into boy bands at the time. That wasn’t on my mind!) Monster.com’s “When I Grow Up” commercial features adorable children telling us what they want to be when they grow up. All of them can only imagine themselves as cogs in the machine. At least there’s Monster.com to help them find their place.

For the Gen-Zers tuning in, this commercial from 2000 is not only in the yearbooks because there’s a puppet, but because Pets.com showed what happens when tech startups rise fast and crash hard.

The premise of this commercial is a bunch of beloved pets begging their caretakers not to leave. But perhaps Pets.com should have begged its leadership to be smarter with the spending. Pets.com petered out in a mere nine months after going public.

This Super Bowl ad from 2011 for the Volkswagon Passat is too cute to dunk on. Little Vader finds themself able to use the Force, but only with Dad’s car. That’s all thanks to the remote starting mechanism that was new at the time.

There are plenty of reasons to be uneasy about Paris Hilton. For me, it started in 2005, with the Carl’s Jr. commercial where she’s wearing that very McBling-era one-piece bathing suit while chomping on a Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger. To Paris’s credit, this ad slot solidified her iconic status as a mid-list celebrity.

Before Space Jam was even conceived of, Bugs Bunny was helping Michael Jordan shill Nike’s Air Jordans in this iconic 1992 Super Bowl ad. Watch it to see Bugs Bunny ram cartoon pies into the faces of burly men.

I asked my partner, a Gen X-er, what he thought the most iconic Super Bowl commercial was. He immediately brought up the one that always seems to be at the front of his mind: the croaking Budweiser frogs (which debuted in 1995). Not quite as majestic as the company’s signature Clydesdales, but there’s a certain refreshing transparency in pushing an ad that associates your beer with swamp water.

Later on, Budweiser attempted to lure in the college-aged crowd to its budget beer with this annoying game of telephone. This campaign ran from 1999 to 2002. It was also parodied in Scary Movie.

In the 2010s, Old Spice reminded us that men didn’t have to smell bad—neither did women, if they didn’t mind wearing Old Spice. Old Spice kept this campaign going well into 2015. It was later parodied in 2019 when actor Isaiah Mustafa, known as the “Old Spice man,” showed up in a Hulu ad referencing this particular campaign.

The famous “Hey Kid, Catch!” commercial first aired in October of 1979, but when it re-aired during Super Bowl XIV in 1980, that’s when it became an instant classic. The 60-second spot features “Mean” Joe Greene, an American professional football player, who has a sweet moment with a kid as he stumbles out of a game with an injury.

“Hey Kid, Catch!” won a Clio Award for excellence in advertising, and was so popular it was even adapted into a two-hour TV movie, The Steeler and the Pittsburgh Kid.

I’ll end this with my favorite Super Bowl commercial of all time: Britney’s “Joy of Pepsi” campaign, which debuted in 2001. Britney recorded a whole new song for this in her signature pop style. She reappeared later in 2004 alongside chart-topping hitmakers Beyonce and P!nk with a rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”