Over the decades, Budweiser has created some of the most resonant pop culture ad hits in the history of the Super Bowl—inspiring laughs over frogs, coos over Clydesdales, sighs over puppies and more. But this year one of the game’s most iconic advertisers is sitting it out, as previously reported, with Anheuser-Busch InBev dedicating all of its in-game spots to Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and one corporate ad.
Here, we look back at some of our Super Bowl favorites from the King of Beers.
Bud Bowl (1989)
Bud squared off against its younger sibling, Bud Light, in the first “Bud Bowl,” a stop-motion, multi-ad game between the two brews. What looks pretty simple now was a big deal back then. “The digital revolution and the internet were still years in the future, cameras still used film, sound was mixed on magnetic tape, and Appleʼs miracle Macintosh had only debuted in 1984,” two creatives who worked on the ad recalled to Ad Age years after the campaign from D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles.