Super Bowl commercials have gotten so bad, it was actually hard to narrow down a “worst commercial list” down to only five.
Earlier today, I took some time to highlight some of the best of the best with a top five list of Super Bowl advertisements, so it’s only right to dive into the flip side of things and shine a light on the worst of the worst.
Picking out bad Super Bowl commercials has gotten a lot easier in recent years. Back in the day, there was the occasional one that missed the mark, but for the most part, a lot of the “Big Game” ads always warranted a chuckle.
However, in the 2020s, companies have opted to move away from funny altogether, or try too hard to be humorous, which brings us to the list of the worst commercials from this year’s Super Bowl.
5. Dorito’s
Doritos used to be a shoe-in for a funny commercial to air during the Super Bowl. The brand had a dynastic run there for a couple of years that rivaled the dynasties of the New England Patriots and…well, I guess the Kansas City Chiefs now.
This year’s ad called upon Jenna Ortega, and featured characters “Dina” and “Mita” as older women who basically had super human powers. The trope of old people doing young people things has been done a lot before, which caused many people to check out and write this Doritos advertisement off.
4. Hellman’s “Mayo Cat”
This one had all of the usual qualities of a Super Bowl commercial hit, but for some reason it just didn’t work. The premise of a cat’s meow sounding like “Mayo” wasn’t a bad idea, though maybe it worked best as an idea.
I’d also venture to say that a lot of companies are paying former and current Saturday Night Live stars to be spokespeople for their products, and a lot of non-SNL fans don’t have a clue who they are. Pete Davidson was in this one for a couple of seconds, and they might have been better off going with him over Kate McKinnon.
3. Jeff Goldblum’s Apartments.com “Alien”
How did this one flop? Jeff Goldblum talking to aliens should have been a lock for a good Super Bowl ad, and somehow it wasn’t. Maybe it was rushed? Maybe it was the fast-paced subtitles?
It was basically the classic “who would talk to the aliens if they landed on Earth” situation, and the answer to that question was apparently Goldblum playing “Brad Bellflower” trying to get the extra-terrestrials to search through Apartments.com.
2. Every Single Temu Ad
Temu went ALL IN on the Super Bowl, and it’s hard to tell whether it worked or not. On one hand, people were definitely talking about Temu (it was hard to miss the six times their ad aired). On the other hand, it looked like they blew their Super Bowl ad budget on the spots themselves, and mailed it in with the animation.
So much so that people joked that it looked like Temu ordered their Super Bowl commercial off of Temu, which specializes in products that are dirt cheap. Guess it’s only right that their commercial reflected what they are known for.
1. Snapchat’s Hypocritical “Not Social Media” Commercial
The worst advertisement of the night goes to Snapchat, which likely caused millions of people all to eye roll simultaneously. Essentially, Snapchat put out an anti-social media advertisement, when they are both a) a social media app and b) arguably worse in some ways than other social media apps.
It was as hypocritical as it gets, and left a lot of people at Super Bowl parties squinting or scoffing in confusion, or some combination of both. Maybe that was Snapchat’s plan all along? Get a lot of people to take Snapchats of their disgusted faces as they watched their commercial.
