Commercials 2011: a guide to the Super Bowl for the sport illiterate

Photo courtesy of Super Bowl 2011 (45) Live Stream

On Sunday, February 6^th, people across America will drop everything and anything to watch the showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers in Arlington, Texas. For football enthusiasts, it will be four quarters of nail-biting, snack-munching, beer-drinking euphoria…or absolute disappointment. However, if you’re like me, watching a football game like attending a differential equations class taught in Mongolian—but that doesn’t exclude people like us from tuning in. Our attention will just be geared towards another aspect of the Super Bowl’s charm: the commercials.

Those flashy, eye-grabbing, and extremely expensive to make ads that air during the Super Bowl garner as much notice as the game itself, and this year, there are a few to watch out for:

• There’s the classic Pepsi commercial that’ll keep you talking and humming the jingle until the 2012 Super Bowl. Remember this beauty?
• A Best Buy commercial starring Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber and… Ozzy Osbourne? Wait, what?
• The parade of trailers for year’s Hollywood blockbusters, including (but not limited to):
  • Super 8
  • Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon (rather, Megan Fox’s torso will not be the emphasis of this film)
  • Thor
  • Captain America: The First Avenger
  • Johnny Depp… No, sorry—Rango and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  • Cowboys and Aliens
  • Limitless
• PETA’s eye-grabbing outtakes of last year’s Super Bowl reject, “Veggie Love”. Not appropriate for audiences under 18.

The other ads will be a surprise for viewers, but don’t start speculating just yet. With the rate for air time during the Super Bowl costing  a pretty penny–$3 million for thirty seconds—don’t expect many newcomers. Cars, beer brands, and other big industries will be filling those other air time slots. You’ll just have to tune in to see who paid the price and went all out.

Tune into Super Bowl XLV—Sunday, February 6 at 6:30 PM ET on FOX.