Your last chance to submit your entries for the 2010/2011 installment of the big, annual Crash the Super Bowl contest was last night at midnight.  So hopefully you all got your Doritos and/or Pepsi Max commercials done on time.  If you missed the cut off, don’t be disappointed; just think of it like you’re already set to submit to next year’s contest!

According to an announcement on the CTSB forum, it might take up to 48 hours for the last minute uploads to appear on the site.  But already it’s clear this Crash was the biggest yet.  Last year, Doritos received about 4,000 submissions.  Right now the combined total for Doritos and Pepsi Max entries is 5720. (note: Numbers updated on 11/24 to reflect the last minute ads that were finally approved.) So which product did filmmakers prefer?  Well as of right now, here’s what we’ve got:

Doritos entries:  4260

Pepsi entries:  1460

So Doritos wins in a landslide.  But as I mentioned in a previous post, this year I’m mostly interested in the Pepsi Max competition since it’s the first year Pepsi’s been a part of the Crash.  A few weeks ago I decided to try and watch at least a few seconds of every, single Pepsi Max ad that was submitted to this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest.  And I’ve actually managed to do it.  I’ve been bookmarking all the good submissions I see and next Monday I’m going to post a list of what I think are the 25 best Pepsi Max ads.

But I could use some help with this bizarre task.  So if you’ve seen a really great Pepsi Max ad that deserves a spot on our Top 25 list, send it to us!  Hell, I don’t even care if you made the ad you send.  As long as its good, I want to see it.  If you have a link you want to share, leave it in a comment to this post.

For now I’m going to post links to two particularly noteworthy ads.  The first got my attention because it’s full of recognizable faces.  It features two writers from Conan O’Brian’s staff that often play different characters on his show.  Both those guys are awesome.  And according to some of the comments on the video one actress is a regular in videos produced by The Onion and another girl was a “hottie” on that show The Good Guys a few weeks back.

Office Break- Pepsi Max:

The final gag at the end of the video is ingenious but I don’t know…the ad as a whole just doesn’t really grab me.  It seems like it was produced by someone with deep pockets (deep compared to 99.99% of CTSB contestants) and money and production values were used to cover up a weak script.  In a weird way, I think this entry is actually hurt by the fact that they used a recognizable cast.  It seems like a lot of effort with only a small pay off.  To me at least, ads that try to “spend” their way into the finals are a real turn off.   UPDATE:  Oh wow.  I assumed this ad was made by someone who worked at the Conan O’Brian show.  But it turns out this entry was created by a filmmaker named Kevin Willson.  His entry last year made it to the final 6 and aired during the 2010 Super Bowl.  It didn’t score high enough on the Ad Meter to get a bonus but Wilson won a $25,000 finalist prize.

Tool Fight:

That’s a very high-quality submission and you’ll notice that the name of the featured construction company is “Herbert Construction.”  There’s nothing to confirm this 100% but it seems pretty likely that this ad was created by 2009 Crash the Super Bowl champs, The Herbert Brothers.  They’re the guys who won a million bucks after their brilliant “Free Doritos” commercial was rated the best ad of the entire 2009 Super Bowl.  I had seen them doing a promotional video for this year’s Crash and they seemed very excited about submitting a Pepsi Max ad this year.  Plus it features a nut shot which is definitely their style.  AND ANOTHER UPDATE:  Yep, this ad for sure was made by the Herbert Brothers.  It even features one of the actors from their famous . If the Herbert Brothers make to the finals again, this will be their third trip to the Super Bowl.  Besides “Free Doritos” they also won $10,000 for making it to the finals the first year Doritos ran the Crash with a video called .

Anyways, remember to check back next Monday to see our picks for the Top 25 and if you’ve seen an ad we need to include, let us know!  UPDATE:  I’m happy to look at any videos anyone wants to send me and I’ll even give you a quick review if you’d like one, but my inbox is getting pretty messy.  So please don’t e-mail me your links.  Post them in a comment so that everyone can see it.