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While there are plenty of top-of-the-line advertisements from past Super Bowls, not all of them spark the desired reaction out of the millions of viewers watching it live. We all know opinions on these Super Bowl commercials are completely subjective, yet that doesn’t stop some from being called out as an outright miss in getting the point across.
In this article, we’ll discuss 5 of the most controversial Super Bowl commercials of all time, including when they aired, what the commercial was about, and why it received so much backlash. Check them out for yourself and see if you agree that they should have made it onto our ‘Most Controversial’ list.
Beginning our list of the most controversial Super Bowl commercials of all time was the Just for Feet commercial called the “Kenyan Mission”. The ad starts with military officials tracking a bare human footprint in a Kenyan-like environment, which then cuts to a man running on the savanna grass and sand. As he continues running, he’s handed a cup of water from an onlooker (similar to how water is handed to runners during marathons), which is laced with something that knocks him out so the group of military men can catch up to him.
When the man comes to, he notices fresh new kicks laced onto his feet, which he appears to dislike, attempting to shake them off. In the end, viewers get the general gist of this commercial – “no one should run without shoes on”, but the racial innuendos throughout this one might’ve just taken it a bit too far.
Up next is a classic General Motors commercial that wasn’t well received by the public during its 2007 airtime. The commercial features an assembly line robotic arm that makes the mistake of dropping its first screw on the ground. The robotic arm feels ashamed for what it did and proceeds to get fired from its job. After a comical slew of skits where the robot is placed in several new jobs (not as prestigious as an assembly line robot), it stands on the side of the road, getting passed by fresh new cars it could be working on.
Eventually, the arm decides to take its fate into its own hands, staring over the edge of a bridge it’s about to jump off of with apparently nothing left to “live” for. The robotic arm jumps to its death, to which it wakes up from a horrible nightmare back in the assembly line. This one didn’t take too well with viewers, especially considering how sensitive the topic of suicide and self-harm is in modern cultures.
Just like the name of the commercial states, this 2010 Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow focuses on the aspects surrounding pushing an anti-abortion agenda. While everyone in America is free to say what they wish, the message in this one just seemed flat-out odd. It begins with Tebow’s mother alluding to how she “almost lost her child” several times, making it clear that she was thinking of getting an abortion while pregnant with Tim.
After getting tackled to the ground by Tebow and standing up immediately, she claims that she’s “trying to tell her story here”, turning what should be a comical ad into a historical moment of what Tim Tebow’s fate could’ve been if it weren’t for his mom deciding not to get an abortion.
While there’s nothing to be incredibly upset about in this one, the advertising technique of this Coke vs. Pepsi SodaStream commercial is completely uncalled for. The 2013 Super Bowl ad features two delivery drives, one Coke and one Pepsi, pulled up to a convenience store and raced to wheel in their shipments of soda.
The scene cuts to a pampered-looking man pressing down on the SodaStream equipment, causing all of the sodas on delivery men’s shipments to explode. As the man proceeds to press the button multiple times, the truck’s entire shipment of sodas explodes, claiming that the product would save “over 2 billion bottles and cans” this season if you go with SodaStream. Unfortunately for any recycle-haters, soda drinkers still side with the two famous rivaling brands over the lackluster SodaStream counterpart.
This commercial has to be one of the oddest out there to air during the 2018 Super Bowl. It starts with a man entering the church as he confesses several sins to a priest, including lying about animal treatment before being processed into meat. The man continues to rat himself out on the malpractices in the livestock and meat packaging industry, saying he “tricked millions of people into believing the animals they ate lived good lives”.
He claims that you can’t move a mass amount of animals without some shady practices occurring, to which he then asks “What’s my penance?” the priest responds, “There is no penance” to which he shuts the door on the man. The man turns around and sees a woman listening in on his conversation the entire time, to which he feels completely ashamed.
The commercial ends with a brief one-liner saying “Go Vegan” to which we’re almost certain that the majority of onlookers did no such thing, considering how ridiculous of a message PETA was trying to portray during the world’s biggest football event.
Liam has been a major sports fan and soccer player for over a decade, with a particular focus on major top-level soccer leagues, including the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and MLS. He has written numerous promotional articles for various top sportsbooks and continues to publish historical and factual sports articles covering the NFL, MLS, NHL, MLB, EPL and more.