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Were you ready for some non-football consumerism? Ready or not, the Super Bowl’s annual blitz of commercials landed before and during the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots defense-first matchup, with some ads served up in advance while others were unveiled for the first time during the game. As in previous years, there were serious clunkers (looking at you Bud Light rolling keg ad), but also a few that transcended their buy-more mission (may you live forever Melissa McCarthy). Other trends we noticed: celebrities double dipping to appear in more than one Super Bowl commercial (three if you’re Sofía Vergara), lots of borderline-gross humor (exploding heads, singing clumps of shaved body hair, singing toilets and plenty of ads trying to convince America that AI tools aren’t a waste of time and energy).
While many of this year’s ads promoted artificial intelligence and the usual rah-rah-America nods to patriotism, one trend we noticed was that the longer versions for some of the best Super Bowl ads, found online, were even better than the condensed cuts that made it to broadcast. What if next year, we make the Super Bowl three quarters and the commercial breaks 15 minutes long? Any takers?
While we wait for that brilliant idea to make it to the NFL’s offices, here are the big game ads we loved the most and a few that fumbled the ball — big time.
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1. E.l.f. Beauty’s ‘Melísa’
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Melissa McCarthy is no stranger to dropping into a short-form entertainment format and blowing audiences away with her comedic talents; she does it all the time when she guest hosts on “Saturday Night Live.” What starts as a nod to those concerned that the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny might be hard to understand for non-Spanish speakers, becomes a full-blown telenovela parody as “Melísa” (one “s,” please) learns the language with the help of Glow Reviver Lip Oil. Telenovela parodies are usually awful, but this one is spot-on and full of brilliant moments from McCarthy’s pronunciation of “Matemática” to the appearance of telenovela legend Itatí Cantoral, known worldwide for her villainous character Soraya Montenegro. It was perfectly executed and timed to the cultural conversation around the halftime show, which makes it a shame that not everybody saw it: It was only shown to those who watched the game on Peacock. (You’ll have to go online to watch the full version.)
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2. Rocket and Redfin’s ‘America Needs Neighbors Like You’
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If Lady Gaga (who also appeared in the halftime show and in an ad for Pokemon) singing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” from “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” doesn’t get your emotions going, images of a lost pet in a storm and estranged people in a community coming together probably will. Heartfelt without being cloying, this ad gets all the elements of its message of coming together right in ways that a similar ad from Spectrum couldn’t quite match.
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3. Instacart’s ‘For Papa!’
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Two mustachioed brothers named Gary and Johnny (Ben Stiller and pop star Benson Boone) sing about shopping for bananas in this retro-styled family drama about a performance that goes wrong. Gary gets jealous about his brother’s backflips and tries to outdo him with increasingly tragic (and funny) results. The 30-second Super Bowl version manages to capture most of the ridiculousness of the lengthier, two and a half minute version directed by Spike Jonze, which feels as silly and committed as any of your favorite Stiller comedy moments. We may be entering the era of Super Bowl commercials that are their own cinematic universes. This one even has two separate teasers.
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4. Google Gemini’s ‘New Home’
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It is with much reluctance that an advertisement for artificial intelligence makes it into the best-of list, but it’s undeniable that this ad, featuring the voices of a mother and a young son discussing their new home plans, is meant to tug at heartstrings while showing the practical ways Gemini can be used to imagine new spaces. The ad leaves just enough mystery (Why are they moving? Divorce? Death in the family? New job?) while bringing the feels, as past Google Super Bowl ads have done. The only other AI-related ad that came close was Anthropic’s commercials for its AI service Claude, which called out OpenAI’s ChatGPT for being sycophantic and for including ads in its service, something Anthropic will likely end up doing down the road as well.
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5. Squarespace’s ‘Unavailable’
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Oscar-nominated actress Emma Stone and her frequent collaborator, director Yorgos Lanthimos, team up for a spooky black and white ad about the actor trying to claim her name as a website. (emmastone.com belongs to Squarespace, apparently). Stone’s acting is so good, she can bring urgency to a product that nobody has cared about buying since 2013: web domains. It achieves a towering feat of setting an advertising mood and it’s much better than another Lanthimos ad from this year’s Super Bowl, a commercial for GrubHub featuring George Clooney and a dinner table full of people trying not to “eat the fees.”
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6. Hims and Hers’ ‘Sick of the System’
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Sick of rich people having access to higher quality healthcare and GLP-1 drugs? Mad enough to take to the streets and do something about it? No, not really? Well, at least there’s a Super Bowl ad that addresses the frustration many may be feeling, courtesy of the company that provides pills for hair loss, weight loss and libido loss.
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7. Budweiser’s ‘American Icons’
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A baby bird who grows into a majestic bald eagle and a Clydesdale are friends. The bird rides the horse to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” That’s it. That’s the commercial. But somehow, it’s great, especially the shot where the horse appears to be sporting giant wings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CdX8W8U7jA
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8. Pringles’ ‘Pringleleo’
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Riding high from her excellent turn as host on “The Muppet Show” revival, pop star Sabrina Carpenter once again shows off her acting and comedy chops by creating the perfect man: one made of Pringles (no argument here). His name? Pringleleo. Funny and silly without being crass or gross.
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9. Lucasfilm’s ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’
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There were lots of teasers for upcoming movies, including David Fincher’s follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” “Project Hail Mary,” Stephen Spielberg’s sci-fi epic “Disclosure Day” and a new Minions ‘toon. But none aped the style of an actual Super Bowl ad more cleverly than this one, clearly modeled after Budweiser’s ads that tend to feature horses and inspirational voiceovers. Even if you’re not that excited about seeing Baby Yoda on the big screen, you can’t deny that this ad sure felt like it belonged on the Super Bowl.
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10. Michelob’s ‘The Ultra Instructor’
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A guy on the slopes named Greg (Lewis Pullman) keeps getting stuck with the tab when he goes skiing with friends because he’s just too slow. To be fair, he’s skiing against Olympians Chloe Kim and TJ Oshie. Enter actor Kurt Russell, playing a wise mentor who soon gets Greg up to speed. It’s a perfect showcase for Russell: this is how you use a beloved celebrity in a Super Bowl commercial.
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11. Toyota’s ‘Superhero Belt’ and ‘Where Dreams Began’
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Two heartwarming ads with the same theme: the way your perspective changes with age. In the first, a young boy is taught by his grandfather to buckle up, with the grandpa calling it a “superhero belt.” Years later, the boy is grown and he’s driving his elderly grandfather; he calls back to what he was once taught. Lovely! Not quite as good, but still warmhearted: an ad in which athletes Puka Nacua, Oksana Masters and Bubba Wallace meet their younger selves, remembering how they got inspired in the first place.
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12. Dunkin’s ‘Good Will Dunkin’’
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Dunkin’ has had a good run of Super Bowl ads led by spokesman Ben Affleck, who seems to have more fun making these commercials than he ever appears to be making movies. In this inspired sendup, Affleck says he’s sharing a never-before-seen ‘90s TV pilot for “Good Will Hunting” if it had been made into a sitcom. The ad features Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Jason Alexander, Jasmine Guy, Jaleel White, Alfonso Ribeiro and Ted Danson, all doing riffs on their past TV characters. And then Tom Brady shows up, not that we needed him for this.
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And now three of the worst Super Bowl ads … 1. Bug Light’s ‘Keg’
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Witless doesn’t even begin to describe celebrating those who are willing to fall down a hill for a keg of not very good beer at a wedding. While it’s always nice to see Peyton Manning (and to a lesser degree Post Malone), how this one lands will largely depend on how you feel about comedian Shane Gillis, who delivers a groaner (and a mean-spirited one, at that) of a punchline at the end.
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2. Fanatic Sportsbook’s ‘Bet on Kendall’
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It must be nice to either have such a great relationship with your exes that you can make fun of them on national television or just not care if people think you’re a scheming, awful person. Whatever the reason, Kendall Jenner promotes gambling in this ad by insinuating that she got rich betting against her athlete exes when they ran into bouts of bad luck. Icky all around.
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3. Manscaped’s ‘Hair Ballad’
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Several ads trafficked in revulsion as an attention-getter, none more so than this one for a body shaver featuring various clumps of removed body hair singing with their little hairy mouths. But why do they have eyes?! Where did the eyes come from!? Nightmare fuel that won’t make anyone rush out to buy a grooming kit.
The post Super Bowl 2026 ads, ranked from best to worst appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
