The Best Super Bowl Ads – Our Top Five
| February 4, 2012 
Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images
It's become as big a tradition as the game; the Super Bowl commercial. Companies spend millions of dollars trying desperately to out do each other and come up with something you'll remember for a long time. Sometimes it doesn't quite go that way, but these five commercials worked, or at least they did on me. Here are the top five Super Bowl commercials from years past.
Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan
This one was a favorite when I was a kid mostly because I worshiped the ground Michael Jordan walked on, but it really is a classic. It worked so well that it spawned a ton of follow up ads with Bird and Jordan shooting from across the country and even from space. It also expanded to include Charles Barkley begging to play with them.
The Force: Volkswagen's Darth Vader Commercial
This made me laugh harder than it should have when I saw it during last year's game. I wasn't alone it seems; Volkswagen is bringing the idea back tomorrow.
“You're Playing Like Betty White Out There!”
This commercial from 2010 has everything: Betty White, an awesome cameo from Abe Vigoda, it's smart, and funny. The only mistake Snickers made was making the follow up with Richard Lewis and Roseanne. That was…well let's pretend it didn't happen.
Mean Joe Greene
This classic Coca-Cola ad aired in 1979 and is so beloved and well known that it's parodied more times than I can count (which means more than five times). In fact it's such a classic, Mean Joe will return in an ad during this year's game.
The Budweiser Frogs
From 1995, which suddenly feels like forever ago, “the Budweiser frogs” is one of the most famous commercials of all time. I think the mark of a great ad is when it spawns sequels (it produced ads that included lizards and a ferret) and gets a parodied on shows like “The Simpsons” (an alligator ate the frogs and said “Coors”). You might have forgotten about the frogs now, but they were one of the biggest things going in the 90s.
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