Puppy Monkey Baby, others steal show in lackluster Super Bowl

By OCEANA PEEMOELLER

On Feb. 7, students across the University of Mary Washington campus gathered together to watch the 50th annual Super Bowl featuring the Denver Broncos facing off against the Carolina Panthers. The Digital Auditorium was filled with students eager to watch the game, score freefood and win some prizes.

“I wanted to hang out with my friends and eat free chicken wings,” Rebecca Na, a junior majoring in chemistry. “I also go for the hype.”

However, free food and a sense of community wasn’t the only reason why students gathered together on Sunday. For some, it was a matter of respecting the players. “I watched it because it’s Manning’s last Super Bowl,” said Nick Atwell, a sophomore chemistry major “Even though I’m not a big fan, [as an athlete] I respect him.”

Students that are not as athletically inclined as others still watch the game for the experience.

“I don’t so much watch the Super Bowl as I watch the halftime show and the commercials,” said senior English major James Rives. “I’m not a fan of watching football, but I know a lot of people really like the commercials the same as I do.”

On top of their main reasons for watching the Super Bowl, each of these students mentioned these commercials as a major draw.

“My favorite of [the commercials] was the weird Mountain Dew one with the puppy monkey baby. It was slightly disturbing but still incredibly hilarious to watch,” Rives said. Na, however, was of a different opinion.

“I really liked the wiener dog commercial with the ketchup. The puppy monkey baby was just plain weird,” Na said.

Considering that the aforementioned wiener dog commercial was a cavity-inducing ad featuring an entire herd of dachshunds in hot dog costumes running in slow motion towards people in condiment costumes, it’s no wonder that there is such a draw. The Digital Auditorium erupted in laughter towards the end of this commercial with the inclusion of the little girl dressed as a ketchup packet. There never was, and never will be again, a cuter sausage fest in a Super Bowl ad.

Additional well-received ads were the Budweiser commercial with Helen Mirren insulting drunk drivers and the Skittles commercial. The Skittles commercial dealt with a colorful candy concoction depicting Steve Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith. Tyler was not pleased with his candied caricature in the commercial, but it dreamed it could hit the high note of Aerosmith’s hit “Dream On” and ended up exploding into a collection of colorful confections.

The puppy monkey baby commercial used a chimera with the body of a monkey, the legs of a baby and the head of a puppy to advertise an energy drink.

With such an eclectic collection of ads, it’s no wonder that the commercials remain such a draw to Super Bowl watchers.