The 25 best Super Bowl commercials of all time

It’s an iconic ad, and a fitting one for the Super Bowl. “Mean” Joe Greene, the Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steeler, is beaten up after a football game. A kid offers him a Coca-Cola, and in turn, Greene turns out to be not so mean, giving him his jersey.

Amy Poehler is one of the driving forces of improvisation and comedy in general, in the United States. As such, why not wind her up and let her go? Best Buy did just that, giving us an ad that isn’t too heady but is plenty of fun.

Spears has been in a few Pepsi ads, to be fair. However, this is one that you probably think of first. Called “Now and Then,” the commercial seeds Spears take a trip through the years, thanks to cola.

Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan hang out for Nike. “Ah, like ‘Space Jam’” you may be saying. Well, yes, but this ad was not a nod to that movie, No “Hare Jordan” inspired the creation of “Space Jam” as a film. Not a very good one, sure, but it goes over better in the length of an ad.

Esurance didn’t want you to “sorta” consider your insurance. After all, what if you went to a pharmacy, and the guy there was not Greg, but “Sorta Greg.” At this “sorta” pharmacy, instead of Greg, you get Bryan Cranston in classic Walter White regalia.

“The Simpsons” has been around since 1989, so it’s surprising that it didn’t have a seminal Super Bowl ad until 2004. It wasn’t for Butterfingers, or even Butterfinger B.B.s, but Mastercard. Homer goes about town, using his Mastercard to run errands.

Like Christopher Walken, Malkovich is weaponized in pop culture for his intensity and distinct way of talking. Squarespace, the website creation company, used Malkovich in that sense. The ad centers on the actor trying to get his own website since the one for his name is taken.

Pepsi hasn’t merely used Britney Spears in ads. Back in the early 1990s, Crawford was a massive star in the era of the celebrity supermodel. The commercial was incredibly simple, mostly focused on Crawford, her car, and a stop to pick up a can of Pepsi from a machine.

Celebrities have become more and more ensconced in Super Bowl ads. In 2017, Amazon struck big with an ad about Alexa , their in-home smart device, losing its voice. This gave some notable people like Cardi B, Gordon Ramsay, and Anthony Hopkins to lend their voices to Alexa.

Remember Monster.com? When the idea of applying for jobs online was a new idea, Monster created a memorable ad. Kids talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up, but instead of stuff like astronauts and doctors, they talk about a desire for, say, middle management positions.

Walmart, like many supermarkets and big box stores, offers pickup now. To announce this, they had an ad where a bunch of cars show up to pick up their orders. They just happened to be iconic cars from pop culture, such as the Mystery Machine, Ecto-1, and the Batmobile.

Michael Jordan returns! This time, he’s paired off not with an animal, but a man with an animal name. Jordan and Bird play HORSE in this iconic McDonald’s ad that helped popularize the phrase “nothing but net.”

Budweiser has done commercials featuring Clydesdale horses for years. In this one, things are simple. A horse and a puppy become friends. Cheesy? Perhaps a bit, but people love unlikely animal friends for a reason.

One of the true iconic commercials of all time, full stop. Clara Peller became a household name thanks to her angry and baffled question, “Where’s the beef?” Peller became a face of Wendy’s advertising for a few years after the debut of the “Where’s the beef?” ad, one that still gets talked about.

One of the most popular and most-watched Super Bowl ads comes to us from Volkswagen. Granted, the ad is not focused on the car, but on a little kid dressed as Darth Vader who believes he uses the force to stop the car. Millions were charmed.

Over the years, Snickers’ “You aren’t yourself when you’re hungry” ads has been done to death. Let’s not knock the first one, though, just because of that. In 2010, Betty White memorably played a young football-playing dude, who needs to eat a Snickers to become himself again.

We didn’t remember it was an ad for some company called EDS, so perhaps it failed. However, we could remember the commercial about cowboys herding cats the second we started thinking about the best Super Bowl spots. It took an old idiom and turned it into a fun and clever bit of advertising.

Ah, the Pets.com dog. Sure, we lost Pets.com in the first bursting of the tech bubble, but the sock puppet dog mascot for the company made a major splash. Frankly, for a moment there, the Pets.com dog was as recognizable a face of a brand as any.

FedEx played ball with Robert Zemeckis on “Cast Away,” and it worked out for the company , as that movie was a huge hit and people remember FedEx being part of it. The delivery company also got to mine its connection to the film in an ad as well. Riffing on Tom Hanks’ Chuck Noland, a guy gets off a deserted island and delivers the package he had with him. It turns out the package, which he never opened, would have been ideal for helping him survive on the island and getting off sooner.

Look, it’s simple, and it was eventually overdone, but at the time, it really worked. Three frogs are chilling in a swamp. Instead of croaking, one says “Bud,” one says “Weis,” and one says, “Er.” Truly, it became a ubiquitous force somehow. Sometimes you don’t need to get too cute.

Sure, Reebok has nothing to do with offices, but they do have something to do with sports. Plus, the Super Bowl and football are, you know, synonymous. In these ads, a guy named Terry Tate has been hired by an office to deliver big hits to those who don’t obey office policy. Yeah, it’s one of those Super Bowl ads that truly has nothing to do with the company, but it made an impact (much like Tate himself).

In the “We can’t have nice things” category, FedEx’s “Lollipop Guild” ad got pulled from TV. The ad uses 2000-era digital effects and the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” to do a commercial about the Lollipop Guild needing help restoring their squeaky voices. FedEx helps by delivering them helium, but that inhalation of helium is what got the commercial banned. Yes, apparently, that is true.

This ad from 1977 is considered one of the first significant Super Bowl ads. Instead of rewriting texts by hand, as has been the tradition for these monks, one monk decides to make use of the relatively-new technology of a Xerox machine.

In 1994, Couric and Gumbel were on “The Today Show” talking about this new thing called “the internet.” Eventually, it would go viral years later as people poked fun at the two anchors being unable to really wrap their heads around how to talk about the internet. In 2015, Couric and Gumbel reunited, this time driving in an electric BMW that they struggle to wrap their heads around as well.

Schwarzenegger is an odd guy, with a Nietzschean-style "triumph of the will" philosophy to life, but he was one of the biggest movie stars ever, and he doesn't mind making fun of himself. His distinct accent becomes a joke in this meta ad where he plays "Agent State Farm." The joke is hit a few too many times, but when it's cut down for re-airings, it'll be fine.

Tom Brady has so many Super Bowl rings he needs two hands. There's only so much winning he is allowed. BetMGM, with the help of Vince Vaughn, did an entertaining riff on the idea that its online betting system is great for everybody...except Tom Brady. He's not allowed. He's won too much.

Ridley Scott had already had success in Hollywood, and Apple wasn’t messing around. Their ad in 1984 riffing on George Orwell’s “1984” is, arguably, still the biggest Super Bowl ad. In some ways, it birthed the idea of the Super Bowl ad as a place to take a big swing, to really announce yourself as a company.