There was a lot riding on a particular test flight that took place on November 2, 1947. The craft in question was the Hughes H-4 Hercules, affectionately known as the “Spruce Goose”—at that time the largest aircraft ever built, with a wingspan wider than a football field. (Less affectionately, the plane was also called the “Birch Bitch” because it was made primarily of birch wood. Metal was in short supply due to the war effort.) Although the enormous H-4 managed to become airborne for 26 seconds and achieved an altitude of 70 feet over the channel at Los Angeles’s Cabrillo Beach, the plane never flew again. Hughes’ project was shelved, and the plane itself was housed in a climate-controlled hangar, maintained by 300 workers who were all sworn to secrecy.

I had a similar sense of anticipation for this year’s flight (sorry) of commercials that aired during Super Bowl LIX. Did I fall for the media hype—that Fox had sold all its commercial time slots by November, or that there was a wait list of a dozen brands eager to pay $7 million in air time for a 30-second spot if someone dropped out? Unfortunately—and I hate to generalize—the majority of those spots were like that big lumbering plane that never got very far off the ground for very long—weighed down by either too many production values (Gordon Ramsay’s “Unidentified Flying Object” commercial for his HexClad cookware) or too many celebrities or, in the case of the “A Century of Cravings” spot for Uber Eats, too many of both. (The Uber Eats spot features Greta Gerwig, Charli XCX, Martha Stewart, Sean Evans, Kevin Bacon, AND Matthew McCouaughey, and takes us on a dizzying tour of ten decades.)

I’m going to skip over what I feel was hands down the most bizarre offering this year—the Mountain Dew spot featuring Grammy Award-winning British artist Seal. (I do have one small note for Seal’s publicist: have the creative team show your client what he actually looks like as a CGI-animated critter before he signs off on the concept. No offense, but the effect was downright creepy, and I don’t doubt that the sight of it sent millions of children around the world screaming from the room.

Now that I have that off my chest, allow me to focus on my primary rant, which has to do with how many of these commercials were “reboots”—recycling of old ideas versus creating something new. Why do I hate reboots? Because they almost always (as I continue to generalize) come off as a light Xerox copy of the original. It’s also a shameless attempt to get our attention by showing us something we liked in the past and trying to make it feel new—even though we’re essentially being served leftovers–perhaps with a scattering of chopped herbs and a squeeze of lemon. 

Take the Hagen Dazs spot featuring Fast and Furious’s Vin Diesel. Just when you thought they couldn’t milk one more sequel out of the F&F franchise, we get treated to this brief, low-octane romcom with Diesel and some supermodel driving a vintage muscle car down the Pacific Coast Highway (or what looks like it—seems like nobody shoots in California any more). There’s no real concept here—just Diese and a pretty girl eating an ice cream bar against some breathtaking coastal scenery. By the end, you’re more likely to wonder if there isn’t a Fast and Furious 11 in production and that Diesel himself is the real product placement, not Hagen Dazs.

However, the Most Cloying Reboot of the Evening goes to Hellman’s cryogenic resurrection of the iconic scene from that late 80s rom-com When Harry Met Sally starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. I don’t know about you, but most of my attention was drawn to how gray and corpulent Crystal has become in the years since, and how beautiful Ryan looks more than 35 years later—although she looks very little like the girl-next-door Meg Ryan we fell in love with in 1989. The biggest problem with this reboot is that it’s a complete fait accompli. We know that, at some point, somebody in that restaurant is going to respond to Ryan’s orgasmic reaction by telling their server, “I’ll have what she’s having.” It could have given this retread new life if they had given that line to the older male diner wearing the hat. Then, at least, there would have been something unexpected. As is, this was pale recreation. I felt nostalgic for the original film for about a minute, then promptly forgot that what they really wanted me to remember was to buy their mayonnaise.

These flops all might be funnier if clients hadn’t spent gobs and gobs of money on them. When Howard Hughes was called in front of a Senate committee to justify spending $23 million dollars on a plane that barely got off the ground, his testimony was pithy. “I have my reputation all rolled up in it,” Hughes testified. “I have stated several times that if it's a failure, I'll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.” I’m not suggesting a similar tribunal for the creative directors of these low-altitude concepts—or that they leave the country. I only hope that for Super Bowl LX, they’ll come back with better ideas.           

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