By: Steven James Downs

If you’re reading this now, there’s a 94% chance that you watched the Super Bowl. Sadly, the game wasn’t exactly a nail biter and I made up that statistic (although it has to be somewhat accurate). So, why did you watch the Super Bowl? For the commercials, of course! Each year, companies make the million dollar payout, in an attempt to have the most talked about commercial by the hundred plus million people that watch the Super Bowl. This year, a thirty-second spot during the big game ran a record price of five million dollars, so it pays for advertisers to make it count. And while most companies attempt to steal the spotlight by appealing to your emotions with singing animals and what not, others take a different approach. They do exactly the opposite and burn the image into your brain. With no truly great commercials stealing the spotlight this year, that left the worst commercials on everyone’s mind, so I ran a poll to find this year’s top five, truly awful and disturbing excuses for advertising. Here’s what you told me:

5. Jublia Toenail Fungus

So you thought you would make it through the game without a big, fungus infected foot staring back at you? Well, you were wrong. Jublia brought in the foot with the well-dressed, talking big toe, to tell you how to fight off toenail fungus, but, for some reason, people find that disturbing while they’re trying to eat during breaks.

4. Constipation

What could be worse than dirty green toenails? A grown man getting jealous over a dog taking a dump on the side of the road. After he gives the dog a dirty look, the man finds a snail, smiles and then sees some lady dragging toilet paper down the sidewalk on the bottom of her shoe. I’m not quite sure what market they were targeting, as most of you probably aren’t constipated, but, then again, maybe you are because I just thought he hated dogs until it got to the point.

3. Budweiser NOT Having Puppies

Why does everyone watch the Budweiser commercials? To see the Budweiser puppy! No one cares about the beer; they just want to see the cute little fuzz ball walk out of a barn or something. I have no idea why they would stray from such a perfect pitch but it seems to have upset people. Instead, they decided to have Helen Mirren tell people to, “Give a damn” by calling out drunk drivers. In my opinion, she should have been holding a puppy, rather than hiding behind a hamburger that she clearly had no intentions of eating.

2. Super Bowl Babies

Coming in our number two spot is the NFL commercial. They decided they would find a bunch of people, mostly children, that had been born approximately nine months after a winning Super Bowl and have them sing about the relations they believe their parents had that night because their football team won. Most people found this highly odd and can’t quite make the connection to advertising. We’re still working on how telling Denver to get it on is supposed to attract viewers. Also, they completely disregarded the fact that Valentine’s Day falls less than a week from the Super Bowl. The whole commercial just felt out of place and set an awkward tone.

1. PuppyMonkeyBaby

The absolute most discussed commercial from Sunday night, by a long shot, is Mountain Dew’s PuppyMonkeyBaby. It was probably one of the strangest examples and seemed to lack a clear point. The ad featured a creature with the legs of a baby, the torso of a monkey and the head of a dog. The creature comes through a swinging door in the wall, sets down a bucket of Mountain Dew Kickstart and licks a young man sitting on the couch. They all grab a Mountain Dew and dance their way out the apartment following this freak of Nature. Mr. Penley described it as, “everything nightmares are made of,” saying, “it’s everything you would find in a crappy 70’s horror movie that would keep you up at night just because it was so bad.” Despite all of this, it may have been a great investment, as everyone remembers it. It brought a lot of attention to Mountain Dew and, when it comes to advertising, that’s all companies truly want.

Those are what you voted as the worst commercials for Super Bowl 50 and although they were pretty bad, I’m sure there will be worse to come. If you enjoyed this article, check out Dominick Giannini’s article on the best commercials of Super Bowl 50. Thanks for reading and stay classy.