In preparation for the big game (and the commercials that will come with it), this week will be Super Bowl Retro Week at The Ad Pundit. All week, I will take a look back at some classic Super Bowl commercials from years past.
The first Super Bowl retro ad is Nike's Hare Jordan commercial from 1992:
In 1992, Michael Jordan was the most popular athlete in America. He was unquestionably the best basketball player in the world, his Chicago Bulls had just won their first title, and he was already well known thanks to previous commercials.
But Nike thought of a way to make him even more popular: Team him up with Bugs Bunny. It made a lot of sense. If Jordan teamed up with a beloved cartoon character, the kids would love him even more, and as a result, buy more of his sneakers.
Let's see how the commercial turned out.
When the commercial begins, we find that Bugs Bunny has chosen to shack up in a rabbit hole directly underneath a basketball court, and he is annoyed by the noise and vibrations from above.
I can sympathize with Bugs. I have had several problems with upstairs neighbors stomping around when I am trying to sleep. It is incredibly frustrating, and makes one want to inflict violence on the people above.
But why did Bugs choose to build his rabbit hole directly beneath a gymnasium? Didn't he realize that people would be playing basketball directly above him? I have to think there were better possible locations for him.
He goes up to investigate, and the guys playing basketball get pissed off. I think they overreacted a bit. It wasn't like Bugs provoked them. All he did was ask "What's the racket?" and they physically abuse him. I'd say there's a very good chance that these guys were on steroids.
So Bugs decides to play them in basketball. I'm not sure if this is going to help him with his original problem of not being able to sleep, but it seems that Bugs has pushed those concerns aside in favor of getting some revenge.
At first, we might wonder how Bugs will stand a chance against these four roided up meatheads, but then we see that he has a teammate: Michael Jordan.
Honestly, Bugs probably could have taken them on by himself. After all, he did once beat an entire baseball team by himself. How much harder could this be?
I do wonder why Jordan decided to team up with Bugs. Wouldn't it really have made more sense for him to have been on the team with the other humans? Since Bugs did not premeditate this situation, I have to assume that Jordan was already at the gym in order to play basketball. So why is he going to team up with someone who wanted to stop people from playing?
Maybe we can assume that Jordan and Bugs were friends, and when Jordan saw that Bugs was in trouble, he simply decided to help out his friend. But there may be another explanation.
In his later years, it was revealed that Michael Jordan may be the most competitive person on the planet. He was already dominating the NBA at the time, so maybe he felt that he needed a new challenge. Maybe he thought that teaming up with a rabbit to go two-on-four was exactly the sort of thing to stoke his competitive fire.
As it turns out, even a two-on-four game isn't a challenge for the team of Jordan and Bugs. Although it should be noted they do cheat considerably. You'd think at some point those guys would have started to complain, or even fight back. But it seems that they were so intimidated by Jordan's presence that they just passively took the abuse.
The opponents also get distracted when Bugs dresses up like a woman. In Bugs Bunny cartoons, I never understood why men got so worked up over Bugs in drag. I mean, it's not like he's an especially attractive woman. He just looks like a rabbit in a wig.
And yet, these guys rush over to stare, whistle, and drool at him. Is this how they react when they see a woman? I don't know many women who would be charmed by that behavior. This definitely makes me think that they were taking some sort of performance enhancing drugs.
In the end, Jordan and Bugs win the game, and leave their opponents a dazed mess.
But did anything really get accomplished? Sure, Bugs got revenge on the guys who abused him, but there's a good chance that the next day, someone is going to be back on the court playing basketball, and Bugs won't be able to sleep again.
And next time, will Bugs have Jordan around to bail him out? I doubt that Michael Jordan has nothing better to do than hang around a local gym in case his rabbit friend needed assistance.
Anyway, they made a follow up commercial the next year in which Bugs and Jordan play basketball against Martians. That commercial was so popular that they made an entire movie out of it: Space Jam.
Rating: 4 TVs - While Bugs' victory in the commercial may be shortlived, there's no denying that this was a victory for Nike. Michael Jordan became even more popular, and I don't know if there was a child in America who didn't want a pair of Air Jordans after seeing it.
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