Grading the SuperBowl commercials

As we did last year, our football-oblivious group gathered to watch the SuperBowl ads. (We caught the game as well, but that wasn't the purpose.)

Frankly, the ads weren't up to last year's.

Our general consensus was that the FedEx ad won best in show, because although it began a bit weak, the giant carrier pigeons wreaking havoc in the streets gave it a great finish. Runners-up included the cars.com commercial and the series of tire commercials, particularly the one with Alice Cooper in the road.

The Apple commercial, for which we had great hopes, was as sleek as the product it was pushing--the Air, which I want--but not up to Apple's usual quality.

Several of the uniformly dreadful ads from the lead-generation company (I refuse to help them by naming the firm) were not only amateurish, they were offensive as well. If the ads reflect the company, that's a firm with which I'll never do business.

All in all, we had to admit that the game was better than the ads. Perhaps next year....