By Wendy Medina

Every year one of the best parts of the Superbowl is watching the commercials. When companies spend five and a half million dollars for 30 seconds of air time, they will put their best ads forward and hopefully make us laugh. Like everything else, the pandemic has changed the lineup of commercials this year. For some reason Pepsi and Coke did not advertise at the Superbowl. Neither did Budweiser, and they have been a staple for years and years.

If you are old enough to remember it or if you have an extensive queue in your video lineup, you may be familiar with the old movie Wayne’s World. Even though it has been decades Mike Myers and Dana Carvey have been broadcasting from the basement of Wayne’s mom’s house. Now they are using their show to promote Uber Eats, which is something that many have become familiar with during the lock downs. The result of this commercial is some laughs, and maybe eating local.

Another ad that made us laugh was for Tide, which was used to wash a sweatshirt with the face of Jason Alexander, from the show Seinfeld. So, another show from a long time ago was used as the basis of a laugh, to sell something. The best part of this commercial is the facial expressions of Jason on the sweatshirt, but I guess that is the point.

Keeping the cultural icons of the past in mind, Dolly Parton’s “9-5” song was used as the basis of a commercial for Squarespace, a website creation company. This time though it was working from 5 to 9. Catchy, and a great song.

The best commercial for many was the daydream sequence by a worker for Amazon who was designing the next Alexa box. She daydreams about Alexa being put into a box that looks just like Michael B. Jordan, much to the dismay of her husband. This is a funny, and a little naughty, commercial, but it makes us laugh.

As long as we are on the subject of bad partners, the Cheetos commercial featured Shaggy singing his “It Wasn’t Me” from 2000. Ashton Kutcher accuses his wife, Mila Kunis, of eating all the Cheetos, catching her orange handed in every case. When she says “…it wasn’t me”, the result is hilarious.

Using candy to say you are sorry is a great way to do it, but by doing things onpurpose just so you can make up with some M&M’s is just wrong. That is exactly what happened in this year’s M&M’s ad, when “kicking your seat accidentally on purpose” or “mansplaining” were reasons to give some delicious candy. When Dan Levy promises not to eat any more of the friends of the M&Ms with the red one banging on the glass of his car, well, he probably will eat just a few more. Morbid, but funny.

There were many more commercials, but these were the favorites this year. In a year that was just crazy with all kinds of crises, it was nice to see some normalcy in our commercials for the big game.