Scoring Supe XXXV's Commercials

Which split the uprights and which went wide right? And which was playing in the wrong game? Some answers here

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January 29, 2001 at 5:00 AM UTC

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By Ellen Neuborne

If a Martian landed on Earth at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 and tuned in to watch Super Bowl XXXV, he would have been in a pickle when the commercials came on. The lineup this year was funny, often well-targeted, but full of inside jokes that would have baffled even the most sophisticated extraterrestrial. You had to know the back story to get many of these ads. From Bob Dole's Pepsi spot spoofing his previous pitch for Viagra, to Budweiser's Act II of its ground-breaking "Wassup" spoof, the multimillion-dollar ad bowl proved once again that the Super Bowl isn't just a sports festival. It's an ad soap opera, in which we follow our favorite characters through the years, with a few new players brought in each new episode to join the cast.