Best and worst commercials of the year

Your favorite commercial this year isn't just one ad, but a series of them, featuring talking dairy cows and produced by the California Milk Advisory Board for Real California Cheese. (The product got lost in the translation for some of you though, who never realized the ads were for cheese and thought it was hyping either milk or beef -- different kind of cow, that last one. Different kind of ending for the cow, too.)

These ads were pretty much made for this contest. They feature cute animals and jokes that are actually funny and smart. There's a "Braveheart" parody in which an army of sheep plot an attack on their bovine neighbors, only to be stopped short by a herding dog. There's an ad that hearkens back to childhood memories of gender battles and cooties, in which a cow teases a bull by forcing him to say nice things about cows ("And do you think they're pretty?") before she'll return his football. The constant changeup of ads means we're not constantly barraged with the same ad over and over and over again ("CALIFORNIA CHEESE! Apply directly to your--").

Not everyone loves the ads: Earlier this summer I shared an email from a reader angry over how the commercial depicts the life of cows raised in the dairy industry. Reader Mary wrote, in part "Get educated, people: factory farmed cows are brutally treated and kept in deplorable conditions. They're not playing ball or grazing in the grass.”

Perhaps that's part of why the ads are so popular. They show a better world, in which cows not only talk to and tease each other, but in which they stride freely in sunny pastures, eager to hand over their milk. I don't think viewers really believe that, but it's a beautiful fantasy.

At press time, one of the commercials that was coming in second in the best-ad voting is an adorable little one for PetSmart. It features a perky dachshund and his stuffed-animal pal, Bobo. Bobo, like many a beloved toy, becomes old and stanky, so the dog's owner pitches it and trots the little pup straight to PetSmart, where he picks out a new Bobo and happiness reigns anew. If only human children would so easily replace a beloved old toy with a fresh one.

The ad is so memorable mainly because of the scenes of the tiny dog really rocking out with his toy friend, and for one goofy scene in which he won't let go of it long enough for the cashier to scan it, so it's scanned while he clutches it in his mouth.

Tied with the dachshund ad for second place in the best-commercial roundup was a FedEx ad that first aired during the Super Bowl. A caveman tries sending a package (well, a bone) by pterodactyl, but his bird is chomped by a dinosaur. Hapless caveman is berated for not using FedEx, and his protest that it wasn't invented yet falls on typical boss-like ears ("Not my problem," the subtitles translate his boss as saying.) When the caveman stomps out of the cave and kicks a tiny dinosaur in his anger, that bit of animal abuse isn't left to stand unchallenged. To borrow a phrase from a different company's caveman ad, a giant dinosaur foot stomps him into mango salsa.

Even when viewed amongst the impressive ads that companies roll out during the Super Bowl, the FedEx ad rose above the rest. It's witty, it's funny, and it (sort of) makes a point about the product. Use FedEx unless you want your message to be eaten by a dinosaur! use FedEx if you have an unreasonable boss who thinks the vagaries of modern business are all your fault! Use FedEx unless you want to wind up as toe jam on a T-Rex's foot! ("FED EX! Apply directly to your--", er, never mind.)

I've had a great time discussing commercials with you, and we'll do it again next summer, after I have the year's worst ad surgically removed from my own head. For now, Test Pattern soon will return to other TV and pop-culture related topics, and I hope you'll read along with me there, too.

For now though, anybody got anything for a headache?

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Television Editor.

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