If Tylenol’s Super Bowl XXIX entry focused on the product to the exclusion of big game-showmanship ("Family Relief"), Taco Bell’s pair of spots from independent shop The Richards Group in Dallas bet big on Hollywood trappings and suspense. The first one ("Border Lights I") interrupts a parked couple with UFO lights overhead; this second one turns out reporters and the government in response. Neither displays Taco Bell’s food out of the wrapper. 

But Taco Bell would play with different approaches over the years. A decade later, for example, FCB would make a Taco Bell Super Bowl ad (“Cards”) that opens and closes with the lens millimeters from the inside of a Chicken Enchilada Grilled Stuft Burrito. A pair of ads from 2010, DraftFCB’s “It Rocks” and “Poem,” show product but layer on a value message. In 2013, Deutsch delivered the “Viva Young” anthem for the chain.

The "E.T"-esque vibe in Taco Bell's 1995 commercials would be out "E.T."-ed in 1999 by Progressive Insurance, which actually secured the rights to the character him/itself ("Jim Lovell, Buzz Aldrin, and Aliens").

BRAND: Taco Bell

YEAR: 1995

AGENCY: The Richards Group

SUPERBOWL: XXIX

QUARTER AIRED: Q3