8 Best Doritos Commercials in Super Bowl History
At the time of this writing, we don't know who will be victorious in 2023's Super Bowl LVII. We don't know if it will be a great game, or a blowout, or a snore fest out there on the gridiron. But we do know one thing: off the field, there will be some pretty great Super Bowl commercials.
One brand to watch for is Doritos, making its 23rd appearance at the Big Game this year. We know this year's ad will feature its newest flavor of chips, Doritos Sweet & Tangy BBQ, and pop stars Missy Elliott and Jack Harlow. With a couple of personalities that big, we're confident it will be a solid spot.
Will the 2023 Doritos Big Game ad live up to some of the most memorable spots from the past? That remains to be seen. Especially because some of the best-ever Doritos Super Bowl commercials didn't feature big names or huge budgets, but rather contest-winning amateur filmmakers who submitted their own spots. We've included several of those here because they really were every bit as good as the higher production value ads like we'll see this year.
Check out these and some of Doritos' other greatest hits from Super Bowl Sundays past.
"Push It"
2022's Doritos Super Bowl ad was as much about the music as it was about the visuals. The spot features a wilderness explorer dropping her bags of Flamin' Hot Doritos and Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The snacks immediately attract myriad animals. The animals, in reaction to tasting the spice, each make various noises that become a chorus of beatboxing. But behind the animals, the voices were those of Megan Thee Stallion and Charlie Puth, according to USA Today's Ad Meter. And the song they were covering was Salt-n-Pepa's 1986 hit "Push It."
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"The Cool Ranch"
This Doritos Big Game spot was one that featured two mega stars from different walks of life: Lil Nas X and Sam Elliott. But it brought the talents of the two together, with both the young rapper and the veteran cowboy actor both dancing off and striking tough guy stances. They duel it out—dance duel, no gunplay—over a bag of chips, and despite Elliott's dancing mustache, the younger man wins.
"Ultrasound"
A surprisingly large number of people were offended by this Crash the Super Bowl finalist spot, though even more found it hilarious, based on hundreds of YouTube comments left on one posting of the video. In the ad, a child in utero comically chases around a Dorito the expectant father is holding near his wife's belly. When he moves the chip too quickly downward, well… you can guess the outcome.
"Laundromat"
Right in the last couple of years of the 20th century, Doritos pressed ahead into the future with a "3D" shaped chip, and they debuted it during the 1998 Super Bowl in a racy ad called "Laundromat" that starred model and actress Ali Landry eating chips in acrobatic and comical ways. It's a perfect time capsule of the 1990s in so many ways.
"Time Machine"
Speaking of time capsules, remember this official winner of a Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest called "Time Machine?" It's an elegantly simple setup of a joke: a kid tricks a man into handing over his Doritos for use as time machine fuel, but the lead actor gets so into his performance that it was a total success.
"Middle Seat"
Another official Crash contest winner, "Middle Seat" managed to cram seven jokes into 30 seconds. First, a man with an aisle seat trying to ward off people from the open middle seat beside him fakes an illness, awkwardly plays a recorder, clips his toenails, flosses his teeth, and reads a book about dealing with an unpleasant medical condition. Then he uses a bag of Doritos to lure in a pretty woman, only to realize she is a mom with a baby. And finally, as the mom slumbers in that middle seat, the man asks the baby to put in a word for him.
"When Pigs Fly"
You see the punchline coming early enough in this Doritos spot called "When Pigs Fly," which is that a boy determined to get some Doritos is going to make a pig fly. But the execution of the ad is so over-the-top comical that it's still a great ad.
"Doritos Dogs"
The winner of the last official Crash the Super Bowl contest, this spot used something we see all the time in Big Game ads: dogs. In this case, it's a charming trio of pups who will stop at nothing to sneak into a store to get some Doritos, finally turning to the classic on-the-shoulders-in-a-trench-coat gag.
