10 Most Shocking Banned Super Bowl Ads That Went Too Far

Every year, companies spend millions of dollars for 30 seconds of your attention during the Super Bowl… Not to mention all of the money they spend producing the commercials.

But here’s the thing… not every ad makes it to air.

Some get pulled for being too sexual. Some for just being offensive—at least to a certain sub-section of the audience… 

And a select few, well, they were so controversial that they ended careers, sparked lawsuits, and destroyed entire companies.

These are the commercials the networks didn’t want you to see… and the wild stories behind why they never aired.

We’re counting down the 10 most shocking banned Super Bowl ads—let’s get into it.

Which ads were deemed inappropriate for the Super Bowl?

ManCrunch: “Two Guys, One Bowl of Chips” (2010)

ManCrunch—yep, we are starting off with a doozy. 

In 2010, a dating site, which services proclivities you can probably figure out for yourself, called ManCrunch submitted an ad to CBS that showed two football fans watching the game. One’s a Packers fan. One’s a Vikings fan. They both reach for the chip bowl at the same time… their hands touch… and suddenly they’re making out on the couch while a third guy stares in disbelief.

CBS rejected it. 

The network cited “broadcast standards” and questioned whether ManCrunch could even afford the $2.5 million price tag. ManCrunch fired back, calling it “straight-up discrimination”—especially since CBS had just approved a controversial anti-abortion ad from Focus on the Family featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.

The timing made the rejection look… selective.

ManCrunch claimed they offered to pay cash up front. CBS said it had no record of that offer. The ad never aired. But the controversy? That got plenty of airtime. Web traffic to ManCrunch nearly doubled after the rejection.

Some advertising experts suspected that was the plan all along—submit an ad you know will get rejected, then ride the free publicity. ManCrunch denied it. But either way… mission accomplished.

Airborne: “Mickey Rooney’s Behind” (2005)

In January 2005, cold remedy company Airborne submitted a 15-second Super Bowl ad starring 84-year-old Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney. 

The setup was simple: Rooney’s sitting in a sauna, wrapped in a towel, reading a newspaper. Someone behind him coughs. He panics, jumps up, screams, and bolts for the door… dropping his towel and flashing his bare backside for about two seconds.

Naturally, Fox rejected it immediately. 

Have to feel like it was the backlash from the Janet Jackson scandal that killed this one before it ever had a chance. At the time, that was one of the biggest scandals that the league had seen. Remember this was pre-social media… back when people had decency!

In any case…

The network’s standards department deemed the Rooney ad “inappropriate for broadcast television.” 

And while Fox insisted the decision had nothing to do with the Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” from the year before—which had slapped CBS with a $550,000 FCC fine—nobody believed them.

Airborne was furious. 

And… given the details… rightfully so. They’d already paid $1.2 million for the airtime—not to mention what they shelled out for Rooney’s time and to bring the ad to life.

Needless to say, their attorneys promptly filed a complaint with the FCC, arguing the ad wasn’t indecent and demanding the commission force Fox to air it. 

Which… unsurprisingly, the FCC declined, saying they only respond to complaints after something airs.

Rooney himself released a statement defending the commercial. “There’s nothing sensual about the brief exposure of my backside,” he said. “It’s a fun spot, and the public deserves to see it.”

While the man has a point, I think it is fair to say that we are all better off for this one not making it out of the starting gate. 

Some things are just better off left alone—and this is one of them!

GoDaddy: “Journey Home” (2015)

GoDaddy had made a career out of pushing boundaries with Super Bowl ads. Racy. Suggestive. Borderline inappropriate. That was the brand. That was the messaging.

But in 2015, they went too far… in a completely different direction.

The ad was called “Journey Home.” 

The controversial piece of content showed a golden retriever puppy named Buddy who falls off a truck, braves rain and train tracks to find his way back home… only for his owner to say, “I’m so glad you made it home! Because I just sold you on this website I built with GoDaddy.”

Danica Patrick pulls up in a van. Buddy hops in. Roll credits.

The internet lost its mind… which we can’t say we are surprised about. After all, there is no rallying cry for America quite like someone being mean to a dog!

Animal lovers accused GoDaddy of promoting puppy mills, which, maybe a stretch… but nonetheless, soon thereafter, a Change.org petition gathered over 40,000 signatures demanding the ad be pulled. 

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving caved within hours, writing a blog post titled “We’re Listening, Message Received.”

The irony? GoDaddy had been running provocative ads with half-naked women for years with minimal blowback. But mess with a puppy? That’s where America draws the line. Or they can let a supercomputer predict outcomes, too. Just about sums it up!

PETA: “Veggie Love” (2009)

PETA has never met a boundary it didn’t want to cross—or a person that they didn’t want to piss off, for that matter. And their 2009 Super Bowl submission was… a lot.

The ad featured lingerie-clad models rubbing vegetables all over their bodies in ways that can only be described as sensual. 

And you know what… that is putting it lightly.

One woman licks a pumpkin. Another caresses broccoli against her skin. The tagline? “Studies show vegetarians have better sex.”

NBC rejected it immediately.

In their official response, the network listed specific objections—including “licking pumpkin” and “rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin.” Which might be the most absurd sentence ever written in a corporate memo.

Certainly, things that the poor paralegal tasked with drafting it at the time never thought that they would have to write out when they took the job.

But here’s the thing… PETA knew exactly what they were doing. They submit intentionally provocative ads almost every year, knowing they’ll get rejected. The rejection becomes the story. The banned ad goes viral. And PETA gets millions of dollars worth of free publicity without paying a dime for airtime.

It’s a playbook they’ve been running for decades. And it works every single time.

GM: “Robot” (2007)

A robot drops a single bolt on the assembly line. And then things get dark. Really dark.

GM’s Super Bowl XLI commercial was supposed to showcase the company’s “obsession with quality.” Instead, it became one of the most disturbing ads in Super Bowl history.

The spot opens on a cute little yellow robot working the line at GM’s Lansing factory. It drops a screw. The line shuts down. The robot gets fired. What follows is a montage of the robot’s downward spiral—working menial jobs, waving a “Condos for Sale” sign on the sidewalk, holding up a speaker at a fast-food drive-thru. Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” plays as the robot watches shiny GM cars drive past, a constant reminder of its failure.

Then the robot rolls to the edge of a bridge… and jumps.

It wakes up. It was all a dream. The tagline: “Everyone at GM is obsessed with quality.”

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention was flooded with complaints. Within days, they’d received over 250 calls and emails. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, called the ad “recklessly irresponsible.”

While at a glance, it may seem like quite a leap, here’s what made it worse: GM was actively laying off thousands of workers at the time. 

Probably context, they should’ve considered before they went and released this bad boy.

SodaStream: “Sorry, Coke and Pepsi” (2014)

Scarlett Johansson in a sleek black dress, handling a fizzy homemade soda. What could go wrong?

Well, apparently it wasn’t the content of the commercial at all—but a much more nefarious corporate entanglement that got this one shelved.

Four words. That’s all it took.

In 2014, SodaStream dropped $4 million on a Super Bowl spot featuring one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood. The ad was slick, simple, and ended with Johansson looking straight into the camera and saying, “Sorry, Coke and Pepsi.”

And Fox said no.

The network demanded SodaStream cut the final line before the ad could air. 

Why, you ask? Because Pepsi was sponsoring the halftime show… and both Coke and Pepsi were major Super Bowl advertisers. SodaStream’s CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, was furious. “This is the kind of stuff that happens in China,” he told USA Today. “I’m disappointed as an American.”

Here’s the thing… it all kind of worked out in his favor, the “banned” version went viral anyway. It racked up nearly two million views before the game even kicked off. They looked great while their incumbent competitors looked petty and scared.

Sometimes getting rejected is the best marketing strategy of all.

Ashley Madison: “Welcome to the Club” (2011)

Ashley Madison’s entire business model is helping married people have affairs. Their slogan? “Life is short. Have an affair.”

What a wholesome mission… Anyway…

Naturally, they wanted a Super Bowl ad and as much attention as they could get.

So, for their 2011 submission, they starred adult film actress Savanna Samson. 

In the spot, a woman confronts her husband about his infidelity in front of his coworkers… only to discover that everyone in the room has been cheating too. There’s an explosion. Samson ends up in her underwear. A coworker says, “Welcome to the club.”

Fox rejected it, citing “standards and practices.”

The company tried again in 2012. Rejected. They tried in 2015. Rejected again. At this point, the annual Ashley Madison rejection had become its own tradition—almost as predictable as the halftime show.

But in 2015, the company got more attention than any Super Bowl ad could have provided… when hackers leaked the personal data of 37 million users. Suddenly, “Welcome to the Club” took on a whole new meaning.

84 Lumber: “The Entire Journey” (2017)

84 Lumber spent $15 million on a 90-second commercial for Super Bowl LI. The original version showed a presumably Mexican mother and daughter leaving their village and making the treacherous journey toward America—crossing deserts, riding trains, wading through rivers. When they finally arrive at the border, they find a massive wall blocking their path.

Then the twist: a large wooden door built into the wall. The mother and daughter walk through. The tagline: “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”

Fox rejected it.

The network deemed the border wall imagery “too controversial” to air just weeks after Trump signed an executive order to actually build one. Fox’s advertising guidelines prohibit “viewpoint or advocacy of controversial issues,” and nothing was more controversial in February 2017 than that wall.

84 Lumber pivoted. They aired a shortened version during the game that ended before the wall appeared, directing viewers to their website to “see the conclusion.” The site crashed within minutes of the traffic surge.

Here’s where it gets interesting: 84 Lumber’s CEO Maggie Hardy Magerko insisted the ad wasn’t political. “It isn’t about the wall,” she said. “It’s about the door in the wall.” The company was actually trying to recruit hardworking employees—their workforce was 40% Hispanic, and they were expanding into new markets.

Sure, Maggie. Whatever you say!

Either way, nobody bought the non-political angle—and somehow everyone ended up angry at them. 

Conservatives boycotted the company for appearing to support illegal immigration. Liberals attacked them for seemingly endorsing Trump’s wall with a door. 84 Lumber managed to anger both sides simultaneously.

GoDaddy: “Exposure” (2008)

Before “Journey Home,” GoDaddy had another ad pulled for very different reasons.

The 2008 commercial was called “Exposure.” It featured Danica Patrick, several models, and… beavers. As in the animal. But the way the ad used the word “beaver”? Let’s just say it wasn’t about wildlife conservation.

Fox rejected it for being too suggestive and demanded changes. GoDaddy refused.

Instead, they ran a completely different ad during the Super Bowl—one that essentially just told viewers: “Hey, we had this really racy commercial that Fox wouldn’t let us air. Want to see it? Go to GoDaddy.com.”

The result? Over two million website visits before the game even ended. GoDaddy had turned the rejection into a traffic bonanza.

It was a masterclass in reverse psychology marketing. Tell people they can’t see something… and suddenly it’s the only thing they want to see. Wouldn’t still fly today, though.

Daniel Defense: “Your Family’s Defense” (2014)

In 2014, Georgia-based firearms manufacturer Daniel Defense submitted an ad for the Super Bowl. It showed a veteran returning home, playing with his kids, and talking about protecting his family. The tagline? “No one has the right to tell you how to defend them.”

No guns were actually shown in the commercial.

Fox rejected it anyway. The official explanation? The NFL has rules against advertising firearms during its broadcasts. But Daniel Defense argued their ad was about family values, not weapons. The company’s CEO said Fox had “prior-approved” a similar concept before production began.

The rejection sparked outrage among Second Amendment supporters, who accused the NFL of hypocrisy—pointing out that the league had no problem broadcasting violent content on the field but wouldn’t allow a gun company to run a family-friendly ad.

Daniel Defense posted the banned commercial on YouTube, where it became a rallying cry for gun rights advocates. The company turned the rejection into a badge of honor… and probably sold more rifles than any Super Bowl ad ever could.