Super Bowl LV ads: Vote for the best and worst Super Bowl LV commercials

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused Super Bowl LV to be a bit different than years past, while brands with notorious Super Bowl ads like Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Budweiser are sitting it out on the ad front this year, everything may seem a little off while we watch the events of the day physically distanced.

Although there will certainly be a shift in the Super Bowl commercials we watch this year, nostalgia is a pretty big theme around a lot of the ads, which include stars like Dan Levy, Cardi B, John Travolta, Michael B. Jordan, Will Ferrell, Awkwafina, Kenan Thompson, Nick Jonas and more.

While many of these ads get the attention of people around the world, if we’re being honest, every year some of them are certainly better than others.

What Super Bowl LV ads do you think are the best? Vote for the ones you like, and dislike, below.

We love a Super Bowl ad that’s a call back to our favourite movies and Cadillac created a great one, with the addition of the ever so popular Timothée Chalamet.

Chalamet is Edgar Scissorhands, the son of Edward and Kim, with Winona Ryder stepping back into her role from the 1990 Tim Burton film Edward Scissorhands. Just like his father (with Johnny Depp absent from the ad), Edgar is having some difficulty navigating life with his unique hands. But don’t worry, Cadillac has a Lyriq with self-driving mode for him.

We would totally watch an Edward Scissorhands remake with Chalamet and Ryder, this is perfect casting.

Every lover of early 2000s music (which should be everyone) knows the Shaggy hit “It Wasn’t Me.” Pair that with Mila Kunis trying to hide her Cheetos snacking from husband Ashton Kutcher and it makes for a pretty entertaining commercial.

It’s a simple concept, but the nostalgia factor of having the That ‘70s Show stars and Shaggy himself in an ad with one of the catchiest songs ever released, it’s really all we need - pass the bag of Cheetos!

Who doesn’t love Michael B. Jordan? “No one” should be the correct answer. Amazon’s ad featuring the actor as a “beautiful vessel for Alexa to be inside,” takes the company’s tech to a much more sultry level.

It may make you excited, it may make you swoon, it may make you uncomfortable but you’ll have a reaction one way or another - and this woman’s husband is pretty hysterical too.

Tracy Morgan can truly make anything funny and it’s a proven fact in the Rocket Mortgage ad. A couple is looking to buy a home and Morgan shows them the difference between being “certain” and not “pretty sure” that they have everything in order for their mortgage.

Does mayonnaise make everything better? We’ll let you be the judge of that but Amy Schumer is the Fairy Godmayo adding Hellman’s to transform leftover food into a feast. Schumer is witty but the ad is a little bland.

If you love The Voice, more specifically, if you love the banter between Adam Levin and couple Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani, you’ll appreciate this ad that pokes fun at Shelton and Stefani’s relationship. We’re just not convinced a video call mixup led to the romance.

Listen up Hamilton and Soul fans because Daveed Diggs is joining the whole Sesame Street gang, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and all, for a music-filled Super Bowl ad. It’s hard to not enjoy Sesame Street, even if it’s just for a short DoorDash commercial.

No posers over here! The Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer ad shows Don Cheadle calling out celebrity look-a-likes with the most impressive mix of stars, including Serena Williams, Maluma, Lucy Liu, Sylvester Stallone, Megan Fox, and Usher.

This one is clever and we won’t spoil the end for you but there’s an iconic actor who may or may not make an appearance. Watch carefully.

We can’t say anything bad about Canadian legend Mike Myers. Saturday Night Live and Wayne’s World fans are always down to watch Myers and Dana Carvey join forces to bring back Wayne and Garth.

The Cardi B tie in, as much as she is amazing independently, seems a little forced, but we’re happy to have “Wayne’s World, Wayne’s World, Party Time, Excellent,” stuck in my head for the next few days.

Keeping with the nostalgia theme, Danny Zuko, otherwise known as John Travolta, is back to show off some of his Grease moves, and Martha Stewart thinks he’s still got it.

In this Scotts Miracle-Gro ad, Travolta is joined by his daughter Ella, who’s giving him a hand to setup his phone for a father-daughter TikTok. The ad also features Carl Weathers (Rocky, Apollo Creed), Leslie David Baker (Stanley from The Office), NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, and Peloton instructor Emma Lovewell - so it’s quite the backyard party.

It’s cute but there’s just a lot going on.

More than one Canadian is showing up in Super Bowl ads this year, including Drake who’s a stand-in for Jake from State Farm.

Patrick Mahomes also has a stand-in, Paul Rudd wearing the same sweatshirt.

It good to see Drake going back to his acting roots after his childhood role as Jimmy Brooks in the Canadian classic Degrassi: The Next Generation.

Do you remember that legendary moment when a press conference with Rudy Giuliani was booked at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia instead of the local Four Season hotel? Well the company Fiverr is poking fun at the mishap, saying that you can great freelancers through the service that will be able to do thingbook a press conference at the right location. Laughs all around.

Cleanliness is very important during a pandemic but this Tide ad may have taken things a bit too far.

The concept is that a mom is trying to get her teenage son to wash a hoodie with Jason Alexander’s face on it, even though her son thinks it’s clean. We don’t know if it’s seeing this teen sit on Alexander’s face, or seeing a smelly sock thrown on the actor’s face, but we want better for the Seinfeld actor.

As huge OG fans of Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) since he was the co-host of MTV After Show, we’re happy to see him coming off a massive high after hosting Saturday Night Live the night before the Super Bowl.

This ad also addresses several annoying habits: people kicking your seat on a plane (when we could go on planes), gender reveals, mansplaining. Although we may not be totally ready to forgive all the “Karens” in the world, we would say sorry to anyone whose name is actually Karen

Oatly showed us that when you’re the CEO of a company, you can just stand in the field, sing a song and play the video during the Super Bowl. Is it weird? Is it genius? There’s something lovingly simplistic about it but now that song is stuck in our heads.

Jimmy John’s sandwiches get to the meat of the issue. Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) plays Tony Bolognavich, the head of a rival sandwich business and he means “sandwich war” to beat out the competition moving into his territory. Garrett is delightfully entertaining in this commercial created in the style of your favourite mob flick or series, like Goodfellas or The Sopranos.

Bud Light really leaned into the disaster that is COVID-19 with the Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade ad, describing 2020 as a “lemon of a year,” while we see lemons falling from the sky cancelling flights, ruining hair cuts, baseball games, weddings and more (sound familiar?).

2021 may not be all that much better yet, but this ad really does tap into the chaotic 2020 energy.

Not all Super Bowl ads have to be funny. Some of them, like this year’s Toyota ad, can be sweet and heartwarming too.

It tells the story of Paralympian swimmer Jessica Long and how her parents adopted her from Russia, even after hearing that she was born with a rare condition that required her legs to be amputated. It’s these inspiring stories that we really need to hear in 2021.

Put Will Ferrell, Awkwafina and Kenan Thompson together and we’ll watch it.

After finding out Norway sells more electric vehicles than the U.S., Ferrell gets Thompson and Awkwafina to go with him to the country to set things straight. But things go awry when the stars don’t end up in the right place - geography can be confusing.

Why have one Maya Rudolph when you can have four! Set to Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 hit song “These Boots are Made For Walkin’,” the four Rudolphs, on their horses, see a pair of pink cowboy boots they need to have. The Rudolphs use the finance company Klarna to split the payment four ways.

Not a revolutionary commercial but 30 seconds of the comedy genius is never a bad thing.

Alright, alright, alright, who remembers 3D Doritos from the early 2000s? Well they’re back and Matthew McConaughey is eating them so he doesn’t feel, or look, so flat.

We see flattened McConaughey trying to catch a football, almost being eaten by a robot vacuum and Jimmy Kimmel asks if he travelled via fax machine to be on the set of his show. We’re just happy the actor is back to doing silly ads for chips instead of those oddly dark Lincoln commercials.

Remember when you could grab a beer with a friend? Those were the days and Anheuser-Busch isn’t letting us forget those times.

As the world is missing human interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, this commercial will make you long for the time when we can, hopefully, return to working with our colleagues in person, hang out with or get support from friends face-to-face, and just generally spend time with people we’ve had to stay apart from for so long. Remembering the good times may make you a little emotional.

As great as it is to get a chuckle thinking about how many people are going to try to figure out how many bottles of Mountain Dew Major Melon are actually in this ad, we’re cautious about how this new flavour is really going to taste.

This commercial just doesn’t compare to 2020 when Bryan Cranston and Tracee Ellis Ross recreated legendary scenes from “The Shining.”

Welcome babies! The Huggies Super Bowl ad is introducing newborns to the world while they’re still in that wonderful time when they can basically do whatever they want. This all happening as adults try to navigating the first few years of parenthood, possibly with Huggies products.

The Pringles ad about flavour stacking could have used a bit more of a narrative, or explanation or something else to boost the concept.

We see astronauts stranded because people are too busy celebrating their stacked flavours of Pringles, and that’s it. That’s the ad. Maybe it’s fine when you make such an addictively delicious snack.

In Bud Light’s second Super Bowl LV ad, “legends” of the Bud Light commercials from the past return to restore the beer in stores, including Post Malone, Cedric the Entertainer, the “I Love You, Man” guy, the Bud Knight and Dave Bickler the “Real Men of Genius” singer.

We really enjoyed the call back to Bud Light ads of the past, it’s nostalgic, fun and will prompt you to look them all up.

No one knows how to hustle like Dolly Parton, the icon who we also have to thank for funding the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

This complete gem of a human also had the time to take part in a Super Bowl ad for SquareSpace, telling us to get our 5 to 9 side hustle on. All while we listen to the revamped lyrics of the iconic tune 9 to 5. Everyone can use a little more Dolly!

Yes, there is yet another streaming service for everyone to pay for in March, Paramount+.

Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: Picard) is welcoming all his ViacomCBS colleagues to Paramount Mountain, where they now live, including Stephen Colbert, Dora the Explorer, Beavis and Butthead, Gayle King, James Corden, RuPaul, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Snooki, just to name a few.

If you can’t think of a more bizarre group of people together, things get “weirder” when Stewart prompts them all to dance on the mountain, cut to the classic SpongeBob SquarePants “Sweet Victory” clip.

The most interesting thing about the Logitech ad is that we get a sneak peak of a Lil Nas X song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, which hasn’t actually been released yet.

The premise of the ad is that Logitech supports creators who are breaking barriers, being creative and “defy what logic says we should look like, sound like be like.” There’s no doubt Lil Nas X is just a generally cool and creative human, and now we just want to hear the rest of this song.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a massive number of people not being able to work and losing their jobs. Indeed’s Super Bowl commercial walks us through the gruelling and often emotional process of searching for, applying to and hopefully eventually getting a job.

It definitely tugs at the heartstrings but there’s a quirk to this ad you can’t miss.

If you watched the Indeed ad above, did you notice a clip of a parent, carrying a child in a piggy-back around 29 seconds into the commercial? Well the Guaranteed Rate ad seems to use the exact same clip around the 52-second mark, talk about awkward.

You’d think these companies could figure out how to not use the same stock footage, but apparently not.

Have you ever thought to yourself: “I wonder what Nick Jonas will look like when he gets older?” Well now you know thanks to this Dexcom ad, a glucose monitoring system.

Jonas has Type 1 diabetes and he’s comparing limited technology for people with diabetes to check their blood sugar to other tech advances like drones, robot vacuums and space travel.

The one thing you can be happy about with this E*Trade commercial is that we don’t have any talking babies, and that’s an accomplishment.

Candice and Tony Romo are “comfort enthusiasts” in the Skechers commercial and certainly many of us can relate. Stretchy pants for eating, sleeping in - we understand the appeal.

The couple are likeable enough and this ad has the vibe of an intro to an HGTV show, but the execution of the concept falls a bit flat. Let’s just say it doesn’t make us want to run out and buy a pair of Skechers.

A company has finally convinced music legend Bruce Springsteen to participate in a commercial, and it all comes along with Jeep’s ad message of unity in the U.S. The idea focuses on a chapel in Lebanon, Kansas, which is the geographic centre of the 48 United States.

Whether you like the ad or not, it’s still a historic moment that “The Boss” has finally agreed to participate in a commercial.

Vroom’s commercials is a little too intense. This ad plays on the forceful and aggressive sales tactics at car dealerships, but they take it up a notch with threats of physical pain if this man doesn’t buy a car. It just isn’t necessarily the most entertaining ad there is to see this year.

Can a Chipotle burrito save the world? Depending on how hungry you are it may seem like it’s changing your world.

The chain restaurant isn’t talking about hunger though, it’s actually to promote the company’s approach to a more sustainable business, touting real ingredients and local produce sourcing. The ad doesn’t really go into detail about how the company does that, but we are now craving a Chipotle burrito.

Anyone can be an investor, according to Robinhood. It’s a pretty generic ad when really, most people are now probably more interested in paying attention to the GameStop-Robinhood frenzy.