Inspirational Pokémon Super Bowl Commercial Beats Nike at Their Own Game

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It’s Super Bowl time and you know what that means: folks are spending a Mewtwo’s ransom in Pokédollars for commercial airtime. An event unto themselves, the commercials are often spectacles that demand to be seen all on their own–a moon to the planetary gravitational pull of the Superb Owl (hoot, hoot). Nintendo’s no different, as they’ve likely shelled out hella bucks for this 70 second spot, but thing that does set them apart is that they totally nailed the Nike/Adidas/sports commercial tone–they just did it with Pokémon.

As you’re watching this commercial, all through its just-over-a-minute length, you can blur the lines between the real world and the Pokéworld. It gets easy to pretend that this would totally be a commercial that plays on Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, or anywhere else. Prepare to get psyched.

Oh! Also: make sure you look out for the sometimes subtle/sometimes not so subtle Pokémon references leading up to the end. The football reference is one of my favorites in the commercial, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised to see that get painted in some high school locker rooms as a nice, harmless senior prank–hint hint (not really, we’d never encourage vandalism cough cough). The chess one is quick, but really satisfying if you catch it.

For the record: we believe you can all do that. <3

(via Polygon)

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Jessica Lachenal
Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.