We've been responding as rapidly as possible to 2012's Super Bowl commercials all night; here, so far as we can tell, are some early winners, from strong car ads from Toyota and General Motors to—well, really, aside from the car ads things have been pretty weak. In no particular order, some ads you should seek out:
Toyota's Camry: It's Reinvented ad splits the difference between funny-for-everybody and the kind of increasingly dated Old Spice humor that's infected all high-profile reimaginings over the last few years. The baby-time-machine's tone is just perfect. The Chevy Silverado 2012 commercial was extremely well-shot, timely, if you're Mayan, and to-the-point. Even Chrysler's Clint Eastwood-infused Clint Eastwood-infused Imported from Detroit sequel was pretty good, until you stopped to think about what he was actually saying, which appeared to be a patriotism mad lib.
Volkswagen brought back Star Wars to impressive effect, although the metaverse implications are a little staggering.
Aside from that: I mean the Doritos ads were like Doritos ads, if you like cute things that refuse to give up their Doritos. (This time they went cute kid instead of cute animal.)