The top-rated ads from last year’s Super Bowl: Celebs and social issues
A father laments gender inequality. An immigrant finds discrimination on America's shore. Melissa McCarthy gets crushed by a whale.
Social issues and celebrity marked last year's top-rated Super Bowl ads, as determined by Paste BN's iconic Ad Meter.
Not a month after America's celebrity president took office, NFL fans saw prescient ads tackling sexism and xenophobia alongside the usual celeb cameos and bizarre pitches for avocados.
The result: a jarring but well-received mix of the serious and side splitting. Here are the top ads from 2017:
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5. Tide, '#BradshawStain'
Grossest ad title of the year? Undoubtedly. But Terry Bradshaw's sauce-induced odyssey duped viewers into thinking it was an on-air mishap before devolving into good, clean fun.
4. Budweiser, 'Born the Hard Way'
A federal judge blocked President Trump's immigration ban just days before the Super Bowl and this Budweister ad, which portrays America's most iconic beer as the product of a German immigrant who faces discrimination once arriving in the United States.
3. Audi, 'Daughter'
Audi's fempowerment spot aired just weeks after the historic Women's March on Washington, with a father contemplating whether he'll have to explain a world rife with gender inequality to his daughter. "Or maybe I'll be able to tell her something different," it concludes.
More: Audi asks what we should tell daughters about self-worth
2. Honda, 'Yearbooks'
Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Steve Carrell and other A-listers deliver pep talks through yearbook photos of their younger selves in a spot about chasing dreams and, somehow, the all-new Honda CR-V?
1. Kia, 'Hero's Journey'
Kia combined celebrity and social issues (kind of) in a frolicking series with Melissa McCarthy playing an accident-prone environmentalist. The world is burning. McCarthy is funny. Buy a Kia.
More: See the top-rated ads from 2016: Dogs, celebs and Doritos