| This was 1994. Shaquille O'Neal had just become popular, and everybody was saying "Next Jordan, next Jordan!" Maybe he might've been if he hadn't taken the most embarrassing projects I've seen any ball player sign on to. His cool factor shrank every successive time we saw him. The thing about Jordan was, he had class. Despite being "retired" at the time of this game he appears in separate ads for at least three companies, which should tell you something. The most degrading thing Jordan ever did was Space Jam -- he never dressed as a genie or approved a fighting game called "Jor-Fu," or performed a laughable rap like this one. | |
| Pepsi fared better with their now-classic Shaq spot, appearing here for the first time. It was a great twist on the "Mean Joe Greene" ad. I wouldn't give it to him either. | |
| Bo Knows Tea! Apparently
he was still getting ad deals by '94. Well, good....Bo
was an awesome dude. This is another 90's "fisheye
nightmare" spot, but the bad cinematography is
lessened by the hilarious sight of Bo acting all Road
Runner. This ad was not exclusive to the Bowl, and aired
for months afterward. The other tea spot stars David Carradine, the star of the syndicated action series "Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues." Which I didn't watch, so if this ad is riffing on the show in any way, I couldn't tell you. |
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| How many more basketball stars does a football game need? This Converse ad got a bit of pre-Bowl press for using the surviving members of the Lollipop Guild in an Oz parody starring Grandma-ma and MJ. | |
| Every year there are companies which offer ads that aren't loud or gimmicky enough to be remembered, yet clever enough to deserve it. 1994 Visa, we salute you. | |
| And then, every year there are companies that don't do anything special and offer up nothing worth discussing. ...Here's some of them. | |
| By the time this ad appeared, the game was almost over. Fourth-quarter ads have the disadvantage of airing when you're burned out and much harder to impress. It's not the time to air an ad this lame. FedEx, you fail! | |
| The focus of the phone business has changed dramatically in twenty years. It was all about landlines in '94, and what you saw on Freakazoid was accurate -- it was a WAR. Three major companies battled neck and neck for years, continually taking shots at each other, trying to top each other with new plans and deals while slandering the other deals. MCI introduced "Friends and Family," a plan that gave you discounts for family phone calls; AT&T responded with "MCI is so evil that they want to collect the phone numbers of your family members!" The cola wars were nothing compared to this. | |
| Speaking of Freakazoid, that show is all I can think of when I watch these. | |
| The game aired on NBC that year and
network promos included hype for the midseason return of
LA Law and for a TV movie, "Witness To The
Execution." It was about how, in 1999, American
moral values were to have fallen so far that capital
punishment would be a public event. I mean in the
Astrodome, with millions surrounding the chair, a giant
digital clock counting down the minutes, and the National
Anthem sung by a celebrity right before the zapping. You can guess the plot already: the man is innocent, only ONE WOMAN can stop everything, various villains want to stop her from stopping everything, yadda yadda. It faced some backlash before it aired, mainly from some dumb people who had no concept of satire (read: Senators) and thought NBC was legitimately promoting an execution for ratings, albeit a fake one. This movie is embarrassing for many reasons, but this one leads them: if you're going to make a movie about the future, and you're going to make some bold predictions, for the love of all that is holy, DON'T set it only five years ahead. |
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