Gloves are on, the Super Bowl is coming. But will it hurt this year?

After Volvo Trucks, Bud light is attempting to resurrect a muscle star during the Super Bowl. This sounds pretty “awesome”. No?

Bud always comes with wit and their Superbowl ads are usually breath-takingly funny. But will it manage to overtake the latest Volvo Trucks film. Volvo came unannounced. Bud has already released its teaser, and revealed Arnie’s in it. Where is the surprise for Sunday?

Ping-pong warm-up against the “famous splits”. It’s a viral match between an old iron-pumping, fist-fighting legend and a martial arts icon.

The meter is already ticking – 68.5 million views for Volvo Trucks + JCV and counting.

Whatever is coming on the 2nd of February, we’re eager to see if it can beat that score.

So! Gloves are on between Schwarzenegger and Van Damme, between Budlight and Volvo Trucks. But what is it this year with Super Bowl XLVIII?

Will it be so cold and freezing that they fear power cuts and no one will be able to watch?

Why did so many brands release their ads in advance?

Do they fear the numbers will not be there to match the astronomically expensive media spaces they’ve bought?

And judging by the creative quality of what we have seen so far, it’s rather feeble.

VW is praised for cars that reach 100,000 miles! Isn’t 100,000 miles rather standard for any cars these days? I tend to agree with the teenage daughter in the passenger seat on that one. I remember fondly a time when we were celebrating Mercedes-Benz and then Volvo car for vehicles reaching 1,000,000 kms.

Jaguar is releasing a film with 2 ideas, 2 ideas that on their own would make great campaigns (It’s good to be bad, and British villains), but that end up like a dogs’ dinner. First because villains always get defeated if not killed, stiff upper lip or not, and also because no one liked Jaguar back in the old days when they were making bad cars that only stayed in the garage, i.e. when it was definitely not good to be bad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bls1KKDwmo

Kia is embarrassing with its plagiarism of The Matrix.

And Toyota and the muppets feel like, well, muppets.

We were hoping for Danica Patrick to get some sassiness and sexiness in there. But in this year’s Go Daddy! ad she looks like the now former Governor of California!

Where is the frenzy gone? Where is the Superbowl mojo these days? We, in Europe, used to rush online first thing on Monday morning following the game to watch the very best of what American advertising had to offer.

Please let me be surprised on Monday morning again! If only god can make another farmer ad, that would be worth the wait.