WATCH: Super Bowl TV ads 2021

TAMPA, Florida — During this year’s Super Bowl, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reigned supreme on the field. During advertising’s biggest night, there were hits and misses as well among the commercials.

Overall, this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads focused on light humor that strove to entertain and connect. But that made the few ads that took a different approach stand out even more.

Jeep

Bruce Springsteen issued a call for common ground, unity and political centrism in a 2-minute long ad for Jeep that ran during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Robinhood

Robinhood, the stock trading app that helped fuel GameStop mania and ended up in a PR crisis, is running a Super Bowl ad. The 30-second spot, which debuted during Sunday's game, highlights the company's branding push that it is "opening America's financial system to everyone." The commercial features everyday people living their lives and shows how they can incorporate the Robinhood app into their daily routines. The commercial ends with the slogan "we are all investors."

Amazon

Amazon’s commercial showed a woman fantasizing that her new Alexa comes in the form of Michael B. Jordan. He strips his shirt when asked to dim the lights and reads a book to her in a bubble bath, all to the chagrin of her hapless husband. The humorous ad captured the restlessness of being stuck at home during the pandemic and added to the evening’s diversity with two Black leads in the ad.

Anheuser-Busch

Anheuser-Busch’s corporate brand spot shows typical pre-pandemic scenes of people sharing a beer — kitchen workers, orchestra players, cubicle dwellers, strangers at an airport bar — and reminded people to look forward to that again. “So when we’re back, let’s remember, it’s never just about the beer,” a voiceover states. “It’s about saying that simple human truth, we need each other.” The ad manages to capture the nostalgia people feel about pre-pandemic times without being heavy handed.

Cadillac

Timothée Chalamet is pitch perfect as Edgar, the son of Edward Scissorhands, in Cadillac’s ad for its new Lyriq car. Edgar has difficulty with his inherited scissor-hands when he deflates a football and severs a bus’s stop cord. He wistfully plays a virtual reality car simulator. Edgar’s mother, Winona Ryder revisiting her role in the 1990 film, gives him a Cadillac Lyriq. The point? The car’s “hands free super cruise” feature lets you to drive with little hand contact.

Scott’s Miracle-Gro

Scott’s Miracle-Gro had a good year as people flocked to their backyards to hang out and work on their gardens as a pandemic hobby. With its first-ever Super Bowl ad, Scott’s was looking to keep that momentum going. The ad shows not one but six celebrities in various degrees of recognizability on a backyard set — Martha Stewart, Carl Weathers and John Travolta among them.

Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer

Michelob Ultra’s Organic Seltzer ad was stuffed full of celebrities — all of whom turned out to be lookalikes. Meanwhile a voice-over in a Christopher Walken-like accent turns out not to be Christopher Walken. The message is that the product is authentically organic.

Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade

Bud Light used lemons as a metaphor for everything that went wrong in 2020 to introduce its new Seltzer Lemonade. In the humorous spot a downpour of literal lemons ruins weddings, cancels flights, disrupts at-home haircuts, destroys baseball stadium cardboard cutouts and causes general chaos. It manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment with a humorous metaphor that ties directly into the product.

General Motors

Light humor was prevalent throughout game-day ads, and GM’s was one of the better executions. When Will Ferrell finds out Norway has more electric vehicles per capita than the U.S., he goes on a madcap journey spanning countries with singer and actress Awkwafina and comedian Kenan Thompson to show that GM’s new battery for electric cars will soon be available for everyone.

DoorDash

For its first ever Super Bowl ad, DoorDash went hard on nostalgia, enlisting Sesame Street Muppets including Cookie Monster and Big Bird to convey the message that DoorDash can deliver goods from local stores, not just restaurant delivery. “Hamilton” actor Daveed Diggs gave the ad some pizazz, singing a peppy version of the children’s song “People in Your Neighborhood,” that morphs into a rap.

M&M’s

In contrast with Jeep, M&M’s had a much lighter take on the same “come together” message. A bag of M&M’s is the perfect apology for mansplaining, calling someone a “Karen,” having a gender reveal party accident and other contemporary faux pas. Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” apologizes to the M&M anthropomorphic characters that are Super Bowl mainstays and says he promises not to “eat any more of your friends.”

Uber Eats

"Wayne's World" stars Mike Myers and Dana Carvey reunited their characters, Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, for an Uber Eats Super Bowl commercial.

Cheetos

Who among us hasn’t stolen our roommate’s/partner’s/spouse’s snacks? In this ad, Mila Kunis keeps taking Ashton Kutcher’s Cheetos and honestly, we can relate.

Oatly

Sure, the CEO’s singing may not have been a hit for everyone. But after airing the ad, the company gave away T-shirts (now sold out) that poked fun at the terrible-ness of the ad. That is some good marketing.

Huggies

Babies are, obviously, incredibly cute, so they’re guaranteed to win us over. The Huggies ad shows just how universally loved babies are by showing short clips of babies doing things like pooping, licking their toes and eating. In a way, Huggies had an unfair advantage. Who doesn’t love babies?

Toyota

Toyota’s commercial featuring American Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long is one that’s sure to pull at the heartstrings. Long, a 13-time Paralympic gold medalist, shows the “hope and strength in all of us,” Toyota says of the ad, depicting Long’s adoption story.

State Farm

This State Farm commercial, like many State Farm commercials, was star-studded — it featured Aaron Rodgers, Paul Rudd and Patrick Mahomes (right after we’d just seen him playing!). Then Drake showed up, introducing himself as “Drake from State Farm.”