• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, February 4, 2008

Last night was chockful of ups, downs and surprise endings. And the Giants won! Here's a look at the $2.7 million hits, misses and fumbles from last night's game.

Let's begin with the confusing -- and by confusing, I'm talking about the Doritos ads. One was a year-old user-created spot that didn't make the cut into last year's Super Bowl, and the other featured an aspiring singer who was given a big break. The Super Bowl was not the right venue to showcase this contest winner; I also can't understand the use of an ad created for a contest for a shot in last year's game. Don't get me wrong: it was one of my favorite user-generated ads... in 2007.

Did anyone visit GoDaddy.com after its commercial aired to watch the rejected spot? Let me know what happened.

Is it just me, or was there a major number of dot-com advertisers this year? Aside from GoDaddy, there was Salesgenie.com, Cars.com, E-Trade, and Careerbuilder.com.

The ads that hit the bull's-eye last night came from Coca-Cola, Garmin, Tide, Hyundai and Pepsi. Coke's political ad starring James Carville and Bill Frist sweetly displayed a way to check political preferences at the door and bond over similar interests. Even better was the brand's ad using cartoon character floats vying for the Coke balloon. It's about time Charlie Brown won something. A time-traveling Napoleon Bonaparte and catchy French music made the Garmin ad a favorite. The talking stain promoting Tide to Go was one of the few ads I failed to see prior to the game that I actually liked. Hyundai's foray into the luxury car category generated more waves than the pre-game drama regarding whether or not the company would pull its ads. And Pepsi used celebrities with comedic chops to bring in the laughs.

My least favorite spots came from Toyota, Anheuser-Busch, Ice Breakers, FedEx and Careerbuilder. Badgers and big wheels didn't explain anything in two ads for Toyota, while Anheuser-Busch, which usually impresses me year after year, fell flat with the majority of its ads. I loved the Clydesdale in training and men bonding in the kitchen spots, but the remainder (using cavemen and random abilities given to beer drinkers) disappointed me. Carmen Electra was a wasted use of celebrity for Ice Breakers gum, and FedEx's carrier pigeons on steroids flew south with me. Last year, Careerbuilder allegedly dumped its agency because the company's ads didn't make it into the USA Today Top 10 Super Bowl ad meter. Despite a new agency, the brand fared similarly this year, not coming close to cracking the top ten. What does this mean? Stop relying so heavily on polls to gauge viewer feedback.