NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. lends his face to a candy bar called "Big Mo'." That's correct. [AV Club]

HOW did an ad from the Association de Producteurs des Fruits—some European fruit concern Americans don't even care about—get to be the second-most viewed spot on ad rating site Firebrand.com, over tons of way more recognizable American brands? By being the single most sexual ad in the universe. It certainly does make you want strawberries. Full ad after the jump; NSFW within the continental US.

"There are a few times in your life when you have to tell someone to fuck off and mean it." That's what Peter Krivkovich, CEO of the ad agency Cramer-Krasselt, told his client, CareerBuilder.com (and the press), when the client was disappointed in C-K's crop of Super Bowl ads for them last year. And look what happened: this year's CareerBuilder ads (by a different agency) did even worse. To which Krivkovich responded with "a chuckle." Never doubt the brilliance of the "Office Jungle" again! After the jump, this year's kind of revolting ad&mdash not for the weak of heart.[Ad Age/ Jack Flack]

Backlash against that racist Salesgenie.com Super Bowl ad with the cartoon panda bears speaking in exaggerated Asian accents has, after a slow start, become a frenzy. First it came out that the "horrible," "offensive" ad was personally written by Salesgenie CEO and Clinton buddy Vinod Gupta. Now, Asian-American groups have publicly revealed they are "disappointed!" And just like that, Gupta has announced that he's pulling the ad. At least he still has the support of New York Times commenter Tess in Illinois, who sagely points out "If a Panda could indeed speak English, I would think that one could pretty much assume that a dialect of Chinese would be his native language. What OTHER accent would he have spoken with, Inuit?" Check out the spot one last time before this is all totally forgotten until next year's racist ads.

Yesterday Adweek, the Nielsen-owned trade magazine that competes with Ad Age, relaunched both its print edition and its website. Its ad campaign (natch) scored respectful coverage from New York Times ad beat guy Stuart Elliott, who goes on and on about its funny ads, and quotes executives explaining how changing technologies, attitudes, the interweb, blah blah blah make it just vital to relaunch the "weekly" at this time&mdash with only 36 issues per year. Not mentioned, though, either in Elliott's article or in the cheeky ads, are Adweek's staffing problems; at least nine editorial staffers have left in the past two years, and less than half have been replaced. Some of that exodus was made up of people who decided they simply couldn't continue to work with Adweek editor Alison Fahey. Why? Well, she's not one for being overly complimentary. Take, for example, the way she chose to motivate all her reporters last fall as they were scrambling to finish a long-forgotten assignment on time; One got the carrot, the rest got the stick. Full email after the jump.

Branding experts know that getting the right celebrity to wear a client's clothes at the right time can be worth millions in free publicity. Emphasis on the right celebrity and the right time. An example of the wrong celebrity at the wrong time would be Mary-Kate Olsen, and right now.

Parents using their kids as advertisements for their own half-baked political affiliations has been dubbed "party-training." Dress 'em down in "Weepublican" and "My Mama's for Obama" t-shirts! [CNN]

Just two days after citing an Abercrombie store in Virginia Beach for obscenity for their sexy ads, police have dropped the charges. "Police confiscated the ads Saturday, saying they violated the city's obscenity law because some of the models were partially nude. One showed a group of shirtless male models and one has his jeans low enough to show a part of his buttocks... Virginia Beach city code says obscene material must be harmful to juveniles in order to be illegal, and [police chief] Cevera said the display ads 'did not quite rise to that level.'" [WVEC.com]

So much for the death of television. 97.5 million people, a Super Bowl record, watched my beloved New England Patriots lose to the New York Giants, according to Fox. 107.5 million people watched the last half-hour of the game, besting the 106 million that watched the final episode of M.A.S.H. Television advertisers, who paid $2.7 million for each 30-second spot, definitely got their money's worth. Altogether, they spent $156 million on the five-hour game. It takes Google three days to make that much money.

Despite costing nearly $3 million just to air, a barrage of Super Bowl ads managed to be not just unfunny or uninformative but aggressively unpleasant, clawing at viewers' attention with nothing more clever than national or racial stereotypes, anatomical gross-outs or baldly implausible claims. That American corporations waste money so visibly is, by now, unsurprising. But it can be fascinating and even fun to watch.

Despite the Times' prediction of "gentle and sweet" Super Bowl ads this year, the spots had plenty of gross-out visuals, violence and racial humor (more on all that later). There were also a precious few standouts, worth watching at least once and maybe twice. All are designed to make you laugh and none is quite "gentle and sweet."

While none of these can match the drama of Apple's 1984 ad — or the actual football game — a few of this year's crop of tech ads made me laugh. Check out these clips from Dell, GoDaddy.com, Cars.com, CareerBuilder, E-Trade and more.

Behold the best tech ad in Super Bowl history: Apple's "1984" ad, which cost $1.6 million to make and run, and only aired nationally once. The following nine ads, while perhaps not as iconic, are all fascinating in how they seek to make the mysteries of tech compelling to the masses.

A 30 second spot during this Sunday's Super Bowl costs $2.7 million. TheAntiDrug.com is running two ads during the game. What else could you get for two point seven million dollars (let alone $5.4?) I've compiled a handy chart for you after the jump (and included the anti-drug ad), in case you suddenly come into a shitload of money. [SacBee]

The Times is reporting today that this year's crop of crazy expensive Super Bowl ads is going to be tamer than usual. Basically babies talking on webcams. Awesome. This got me thinking about Super Bowl commercials that were actually memorable, and after some searching I put together this list of 25 (after the jump.) Once you've watched all these you and that chick at your party who doesn't give a shit about football will have something to talk about.

At Davos, ad execs with Publicis and WPP Group have gotten into the buttoned-down equivalent of a barroom brawl over their shared passion, Internet advertising kingpin Google. WPP Group says Google is just using Publicis, Publicis says WPP Group is just jealous; one side effectively calls the other a slut, the other throws back "you're a luddite." Google CEO Eric Schmidt stays above the fray and traditionalists in the ad industry are reminded just how much gravity he has amassed. [Reuters via MediaBistro]

Don Imus can't catch a break, besides the many inexplicable ones he's been handed on platters made of various precious metals over the course of his infuriating career! The cruel and stupid old prick is now, gratifyingly, getting sued for $4 million. Sadly it's for something actually kind of amusing: "Flatsigned Press Inc., a book publisher based in Nashville, Tenn., says Imus insulted the company last year in ads it paid for to promote a book by Ford on the Warren Commission's investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy." Imus called the ads "cheesy," considered an actionable insult only when spoken by a character in Happy Days, and mocked the ad copy as he read it. This all happened last January, by the way. CBS and WFAN offered to settle last February, but Flatsigned rejected the offer. Let this be a lesson to Imus—you can crack racist all you like, but lay off the sponsors. [AP]

Remember those old, seemingly ubiquitous ads for the Hair Club for Men with the guy who wasn't just the president, he was also a client? Of course you do, they were everywhere. Then, they just kind of disappeared. The anti-balding industry had faded. Until now! Last night an only slightly apologetic contestant on Fox's Moment of Truth admitted to being a member of the Club. I could never have guessed from the the big, bushy pine cone sitting atop his forehead. This morning "Hair Club for Men" is one of the hottest searches on Google. Also, the New York Times ran a story today about the recent upsurge of that other bald dude juggernaut, Rogaine. Their new success is mostly due to some sort of icky foam. Here we have an ad for the product which, for the first time ever, the Times reports, is being directly marketed to gay men. Well, on the Logo channel. So about twelve gay men. Maybe the Hair Club for Men is doing the same thing, because that guy? On the show last night? Uh, let's just say that if he gets to the $500,000 question next episode, it just might start with "A" and end with "re you a homosexual?" Awkward! But with beautiful hair!

A tipster writes in after seeing the MacBook Air advertisement with the uber-thin notebook removed from a manila envelope:

Yeah, yeah. The MacBook Air looks beautiful. And so does this ad. But it's missing something more than an optical drive, if you ask me. Until I get me some John Hodgman, I'm not sold.