For the most part Super Bowl ads during the 90s were all about humor and spectacle -- the exception is stuff like this, which only appeared rarely. Nowadays HALF the content is people hugging in slow motion, army men returning to their home towns in slow motion, old people weeping in slow motion, slow motion in slow motion...it's not fun to watch. The only time I should have to cry during the Super Bowl is when the Patriots win their 10,000,003rd trophy.

Far more vividly remembered is this Pepsi spot where a kid on the beach gets sucked into a bottle. At the time it was very costly to pull something like this off. Now we've seen everything, but there was a time when if you didn't have a good idea for a Super Bowl ad you could just spend your way to immortality. Not that I'm calling this a bad idea. If it were new today it would probably still work, even if anyone can cut-and-paste themselves into a bottle with some training.

There's also an ad for a rental car business that repurposes some sets from the Flintstones movie. ...That was just something I assumed and wrote down, but now it's true because it's on the Internet.

The Bud Bowl contest would continue for a couple more years, but this was the end of its presence during the Super Bowl. Bud got off to a bad start, but things are going to pick up for them very soon....

No....when the Coke man sips the Pepsi, he won't give it back.

This had to be the last time Master Lock ran a Super Bowl ad.

It's not included here, but at one point during the game my local affiliate bragged that they were "online" now -- and instead of a web address, provided a phone number to dial up a BBS.

Anyone who doesn't remember the 90s is going to have no idea what the final ad in this break is about. "No Fear" was an incredibly popular brand of T-shirt, capturing the macho image everyone was after at the time in one scrawled, distressed sentence of just two words. When the 1990s are brought up, no one ever mentions "No Fear" T-shirts, despite their being all over the place at the time, especially in school. No one ever mentions the "Mean People Suck" bumper sticker either. You know why mean people have taken over? Because we no longer have bumper stickers informing them how much they suck!

Halftime followed. There are many candidates for "most embarrassing Super Bowl halftime," but I remember this one being particularly bad, and it's in my personal bottom 5. It was a tie-in with Disneyland, promoting their new Indiana Jones stage show with a poorly-acted facsimile on the field.

It can be dangerous to mock a monkey! These tourists found that out...TOO LATE!

After that came this Bud Light bit where an ugly dog attempts to rig a dog show by bribing the judges with a six-pack. See, not everything in the pre-9/11 era was better than now. For example, dog shows were so corrupt that you could buy a win with convenience store beer.

Then there's this man who is so traumatized over having to hold his lady's purse for thirty entire seconds that he has to immediately join a support group. Talk about your snowflakes.

We've reached the downhill slide earlier than expected, unfortunately. Midway thrhough the third quarter is very premature. This was an absolute killer year, but it flamed out quickly. Repeats of earlier ads and ordinary commercials that ran in plenty of places before the Super Bowl are what remain.

It's nothing but good-looking people who like to skydive off cliffs, snowboard down mountains, laugh in the face of danger, commit maximum attitude, wear sunglasses at night, etc. And what's the name of it, if you had to guess? "EXTREME." Just that word, just the most overused word of the age. And you better believe the logo was distressed with scribbles!