So who's hyped for the SUPER BOWL? ....Aw, come on, not even a little? That's what I get for entertaining an audience of geeks.

I admit I'm also one of the ones who care nothing for football and only watch for the advertising, which is usually a mixed bag.....yet I have to see it all. Yeah, you can just wait until all the ads appear on YouTube the next day. Yeah, you can read all the spoilers and watch the purposely-leaked ads by companies who'd rather waste millions than surprise you. And yeah, you can live a miserable, bland existence, but why? Forget it! The Super Bowl is an American tradition, man! Avoid all spoilers, get on the couch, lay out the junk food and have a blast!

But why just have a blast when you can have a PAST-BLAST? After many frustrating years, it's finally become possible to create a series of articles I have wanted to write ever since this site began: mini-reviews of every Super Bowl ad, year by year. Welcome to a January tradition -- there will be many more in the years to come. So pour yourself a Crystal Pepsi, boot up your MLife and kick back!

1994 was the Dallas Cowboys against the Buffalo Bills. The Bills were trashed completely. The game was a predictable snore. Did the ads fare any better? (Wait a few minutes for all of them to finish loading. Also, if they don't appear at all, get a better browser. I've spent years trying to find a cross-compatible video format and it simply doesn't exist.)

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Here we have the very last gasp of 7Up's Spot campaign. I don't know how you feel, but I miss these little guys. Notice how they're only half the focus here; the other half is on little half-funny skits with real people. That's usually the first sign a mascot's days are numbered.
There's something about 1990's ads that sets them apart from any other era: the EXTREME photographic tricks. Some of these are uncomfortably awash in weird angles, color filters, LOTS of fisheye lenses and faces one inch from the camera lens. The result: anything can look like a horrid nightmare, including this birthday party.

"Gut-Be-Gone" is my favorite fake product. Even though I only saw it for one second, and it apparently doesn't work at all, you gotta love that name. I've wanted to see this ad again for years just for the Gut-Be-Gone, but I couldn't remember what product it was selling, so I couldn't search for it. I'd forgotten it aired during the Super Bowl, and it was buried even deeper in my mind that they were selling a....car. That would have been my last guess.
Normally I pay no attention to car ads, but for some reason, I remember loving the ads introducing the Dodge Neon. I can't really tell you why. Maybe the cuteness of how the car was portrayed made me internally squee.
Everyone I knew was sick of the Bud Bowl by the time the sixth series made its debut. Budweiser must have been listening, as the BB was phased out the very next year. Only one ad used the bottles in '95, and that same year, the Frogs first appeared and they no longer needed the Bud Bowl anyway.

So this was the very last multi-part, four-minute-long Bud Bowl, and indeed, it had gotten pretty stupid. It had charm back when it was a new idea and you were watching real bottles in stop-motion, but by this point they'd become rubbery CG bottles and the novelty had passed.