Five of the worst Super Bowl commercials of all-time

In past years, I’ve looked back at the best Super Bowl commercials, but there have been more than a few clunkers through the years, too.

Sometimes that’s OK because the Super Bowl is the most-viewed television program each year, and it’s been said there is no such thing as bad publicity.

These five commercials put that axiom to the test. These are among the worst ever aired during the Super Bowl (one caveat: almost any GoDaddy.com commercial could be on this list, but I didn’t want to embed those here).

5. Thumbs, uh, up?

In Super Bowl XLV, Sony’s Android mascot had human thumbs surgically attatched in some seedy back room. Where’d they come from? Wait, don’t answer that. This is just creepy:

4. Fiat’s Viagra commercial

Yuck was the word with this commercial from Super Bowl XLIX when a Fiat car accidentally has a Viagra pill put in its gas tank. This wasn’t the worst commercial from that Super Bowl, but it wasn’t good:

3. Suicidal robot

While making a car on an assembly line, a robot makes a mistake and is fired. It finds life is not worth living and jumps off a bridge. Yeah, that has the makings of a hilarious commercial. Wait... someone actually thought that was true.

After the ad ran in Super Bowl XLI, General Motors agreed to change the commercial to edit out the suicidal part.

2. SalesGenie’s pandas

There was nothing funny about SalesGenie.com’s Pandas talking in broken English with a Chinese accent during Super Bowl XLII:

1. Nationwide’s dead kid

Long before former Colts/Broncos Peyton Manning began his “second career” as a musician in Nationwide commercials, the company thought it would be a good idea to show a cute kid talking about not being able to ride a bike or fly or get married.

The reason? “Because I died from an accident.”

Talk about a gut-punch. Memes of the kid populated Twitter for days after Super Bowl XLIX, and Nationwide was forced to put out a statement that night after the game.