You almost never saw the most famous Super Bowl ad of all time

The most famous – and arguably the best – Super Bowl ad in history, the Apple “1984” ad, was nearly killed by the company for whom it was made.

The most famous – and arguably the best – Super Bowl ad in history, the Apple “1984” ad, was nearly killed by the company for whom it was made. The 60-second ad, which announced the arrival of the groundbreaking Macintosh, shows a dystopian gathering of an audience of gray-looking men with gray identical outfits and shaved heads watching a leader on a large screen speak in almost unintelligible words about the goal of conformity and “information purification collectors.” A young woman wearing running shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt runs into the room, chased by helmeted police, and throws a hammer at the screen, exploding it into a white light. At that point a narrator comes on reading the words that also appear on the screen. “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh,” he said. “And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’” The spot helped to change not just how people thought about having a computer in their homes, but it also changed the way the nation’s top companies thought about advertising during the Super Bowl. The game is now packed with commercials that advertisers spend millions producing, even before they pay millions more to air the spots, in an effort to make an impression with an audience that generally does its best to avoid commercials. But it’s helped to make the ads as interesting as the game itself for some viewers.