Binside TV: SUPERBOWL 43 COMMERCIALS SUPERBOWL XLIII ADS VIDEOS

Everyone tunes in to watch the great Superbowl plays and ads on the big day. This year's crop of commercials were pretty lackluster and depressing.

SF Gate ponders whether the new downer themes had anything to do with the economic recession. Watch the Doritos : Power of the Crunch commercial where a guy uses chip crunches to undress a woman, rob an ATM and turn a police officer into a monkey before he gets hit by a bus.

There was also a guy who got hit by a bus, an electrocution, a golf club to the head, a horrible ski accident and a low-level executive who gets thrown out a fourth-story window, crashing to the ground below. And that was just in the game's first quarter.

With the country deep in a recession during Super Bowl XLIII and needing a laugh, the advertisers instead gave us a snow globe in the testicles.

It was a big year for random acts of violence (the Golden Gate Bridge alone appeared to be destroyed at least twice) and sentimentality in this year's crop of Super Bowl commercials, which were overshadowed on Sunday afternoon by Bruce Springsteen's exciting halftime show and a thrilling game that ended with the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Arizona Cardinals 27-23.

Advertisers trotted old warhorses, including William Shatner, another collection of busty GoDaddy.com models and multiple ad spots featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Even though there were several bright spots (more on that later), the Super Bowl ads as a whole were an underwhelming lot. Before the end, two people were taken out by buses: a Doritos pitchman and the globe-headed Jack character from the Jack in the Box commercials. The latter ad ended with Jack lying on the street with what looked like life-threatening head injuries - and instructions to see what happens next at a site that wasn't working right when we tried to log in. Should we just assume he's dead?

The pervasive theme of violence in this year's ads was a change from past Super Bowls, when kicks to the groin shared equal time with sexual content and bathroom humor. But recent controversies made it more difficult for racier content to make it to your living room, starting with Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show and an upside-down clown that appeared to drink beer from its anus. Last year, the makers of Snickers candy bars were criticized as homophobic for an ad featuring two auto mechanics who accidentally kiss, and then pull out their chest hair in an attempt to prove they're still manly. And Salesgenie.com was chastised for a deliberately bad panda bear-themed commercial that featured a Chinese racial caricature. With the political correctness police watching closely, violence may have been all that the advertisers had left to work with. source