The 13 Greatest ‘S.N.L.’ Commercial Skits

“Saturday Night Live” begins the back half of its 50th season this weekend. Here, we kick off a series of features exploring and assessing its history and cultural impact.

From the first episode, which featured a live spot for the multivitamin “Jamitol,” TV advertising has been one of the show’s primary targets. These are the commercial spoofs we like the most; share your own favorites in the comments.

1987

Compulsion

“The world’s most indulgent disinfectant.”

Parody often doesn’t age well because its target fades from memory. But even if you never saw the flamboyantly pretentious Calvin Klein Obsession ads from the 1980s, this meticulously produced satire — which turns the luxury cologne into the “world’s most indulgent disinfectant” — remains hilarious and coherent.

Dense with inspired nonsense, comic nuance and surprising twists, it creates its own ridiculous world so fully that it works independently of what it is mocking. As the protagonist consumed by an obsessive need to clean, Jan Hooks evokes Tennessee Williams heroine lunacy. (Note the hair flip and meme-worthy “Liar!”) Phil Hartman’s tuxedoed narrator commits completely to terrible metaphors and a vaguely European accent.

These superb lead performances by all-time-great cast members work perfectly in concert, capturing and skewering a specific self-serious art-house style. But it’s the comic details that distinguish this sketch: Nora Dunn’s Stepford Wife expression; the ludicrous way Hartman pronounces “jejune” and the unexpectedly rich subplot of his building irritation with Dana Carvey, who finds hilarity in subtle eyebrow raises and a self-serious turtleneck years before Mike Myers brought them to “Sprockets.”

It rewards repeated viewings. Decades after it aired, every line sticks in the mind.

— Jason Zinoman

1976

Shimmer

“A floor wax and a dessert topping.”

This ad parody, from the show’s first season, is the one I quote more than any other. It’s a commercial for Shimmer, an emulsion that is somehow, as Chevy Chase’s spokesman says, both “a floor wax and a dessert topping.”

The spot begins with a domestic squabble over a can with an aerosol nozzle. Gilda Radner, holding a mop and dressed for housework, insists that the can contains a floor cleaner. Dan Aykroyd, comfy in a cardigan, wants to use it to top his pudding. On some level it’s a dispute about domestic roles — for the wife, the house and its consumer products represent labor; for the husband, relaxation. But mostly it is pure, shrill, blissful absurdity. Because then Chase, at peak smarm, arrives to explain that this new “nondairy” floor wax does it all.

“Tastes terrific,” Aykroyd says as he spoons up pudding.

“And just look at that shine!” Radner enthuses as she mops.

Then they kiss.

Look, that’s what life is like. Most things are a floor wax or a dessert topping, but some things are impossibly and absolutely both. Might as well spray it on.

— Alexis Soloski

We’ll never know if pleated jeans with nine-inch zippers would have worked their way back into our hearts and onto our legs without the 2003 “Mom Jeans” ad, but here we are.

At the time, low-rise was queen (see also: “Coin Slot Cream”), and the idea of a “generous” cut was something to be banished. “Mom Jeans” named a phenomenon everyone recognized but no one had a term for — “unflattering” was too generic, “baggy” not quite accurate. The ad, part of the infamous Adrien Brody episode, stars Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph in pastel polos and boxy vests prancing around and pouring pretzels, donning knee-length shorts for a special date night. Come for the awkwardly-padded crotches; stay for the feminist critique: “Give her something that says, ‘I’m not a woman anymore; I’m a mom.’”

— Margaret Lyons

1991

Schmitts Gay Beer

“You two look like you need to get wet.”

The late ’80s and early ’90s were the golden age of commercials about magical beers that summoned hot women, like the Spuds MacKenzie campaign for Bud Light and Old Milwaukee’s Swedish Bikini Team. “Schmitts” has all the hallmarks of the form: the backyard pool, the lasciviously gushing water, the guitar-rock soundtrack (Van Halen in the original clip) and, as played by Chris Farley and Adam Sandler, a couple of everybros aching to get their party on. But here, the glistening poolside bods belong to a bevy of sculpted men.

As with so many “S.N.L.” parodies, the attention to detail makes the satire. (Farley flipping up his clip-on shades belongs in a pop-culture-tropes time capsule.) But so does what’s missing: There’s no element of gay panic to the joke, as there was in so much comedy of the period, which makes the sendup all the more crisp and refreshing.

— James Poniewozik

“Saturday Night Live” aired the spot for Old Glory robot insurance in 1995, in its 21st season. But watching it in 2025, everything about this spoof is strikingly timely.

The resonance starts, of course, with the central joke about the shamelessness of the insurance industry and other businesses that exploit the elderly. But it also includes the fear-mongering, the invented existential threat, the blatant audacity of the disinformation and the crass opportunism wrapped in an American flag. Even the pitch-perfect pitchman, Sam Waterston, from “the popular TV series ‘Law & Order,’” was back on that procedural as recently as last year.

Or is it that these things are timeless? Waterston aside, that’s even more depressing.

The topicality made the ad more sharply satirical than the average “S.N.L.” spoof. What made it hilarious were the robots themselves: lumbering tin menaces with electric red eyes, like something out of an old sci-fi comic or high-school metal shop. The vintage cheapness is itself another joke, indicating the target demographic and Old Glory’s disregard for its intellect. “Robots may strike at any time,” Waterston warns. “And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can’t break free.”

With apologies to Adam Smith: Beware the metal hand of the marketplace.

— Jeremy Egner

In a world where the rigid conventions of movie trailers cry out for caricature, “Saturday Night Live” set an impossibly high bar with its parody imagining a coming attraction for a Wes Craven-style horror film directed by the offbeat auteur Wes Anderson.

It’s the attention to detail that makes it sing. The familiar retro yellow font, the Margot Tenenbaum-style fur, the Andersonian binocular scene, the epistolary sequence, the montage of supplies assembled by a pair of precocious children, including a rock hammer, a Swiss Army Knife, a slingshot, firecrackers, a ship in a bottle, a protractor and a picture of Edith Piaf. And who else but “Saturday Night Live” could enlist one real member of Anderson’s regular acting troupe, Edward Norton, to play another, Owen Wilson?

But it was the fake pull quote that made me feel seen, as a devoted Anderson fan who works for a certain news organization: “The New York Times calls it ‘You had me at “Wes Anderson.”’”

— Michael Cooper

1991

Happy Fun Ball

“Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.”

“S.N.L.” has made an entire subgenre out of spoofing pharmaceutical ads, with their litanies of possible side-effects being especially ripe for satire. A fake 2016 ad for “Heroin A.M.” (“from the makers of Cocaine P.M.”) cautions, “Side effects include … it’s heroin, so all that stuff.” A 2013 spot for “Bladdivan” warns against “peeing yourself” and “peeing yourself and not caring that you just peed yourself.”

But years before drug ads inundated TV — a Food and Drug Administration rule change in 1997 opened the floodgates — “S.N.L.” gave a similar treatment to a fictional toy: Happy Fun Ball. I don’t know what context the writers were drawing from for this 1991 spot, and I don’t really want to. I suspect it had something to do with toxic toys I probably owned.

The hype portion of the ad, featuring Carvey, Hooks and Myers, lasts about 18 seconds. The warnings last over a minute. “If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately,” Hartman narrates. “Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.”

But above all: “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.”

— Austin Considine

When Kristen Stewart first hosted “S.N.L.” in 2017, she famously announced in her monologue, in a quip directed at the newly elected President Trump, “I’m, like, so gay, dude.” But it was this spoof for Totino’s pizza rolls that has had remarkable staying power.

In it, Vanessa Bayer plays a wife whose only priority is “feeding my hungry guys” at a party for the big game. “Enough yapping!” her husband shouts from the couch. “We need the Totino’s!”

But Sabine (Stewart), the sister of one of the “guys,” breathes life into Bayer’s non-player character. When they lock eyes, sparks fly, and the tone shifts from snack ad to French art house. “What’s your name?” Sabine purrs. “I’ve never had one,” the wife replies.

They dance, kiss, smoke cigarettes, whisper sweet nothings and spray each other with water from the sink. Their sexual chemistry is legitimately electric, but the guys watching football are completely oblivious to the passionate scene unfolding right behind them.

Like many of the best fake ads on “S.N.L.,” it is underpinned by clever social commentary. Here, it’s that to many men, women exist only to the extent that they serve their needs — they can’t fathom women having experiences, desires or even entire lives that don’t involve them. Few pop culture mementos have illustrated this point with as much humor, and this one did it in under four minutes.

— Maya Salam

1994

Crystal Gravy

“We’re hungry for something different.”

Crystal Pepsi blew our minds in 1992. “Crystal Gravy” debuted during a 1994 episode hosted by Nancy Kerrigan, making it perhaps the most ’90s thing ever to occur.

The Crystal Gravy ad is both a marvel of viscosity and a dead-on match for the actual, hilariously self-serious Crystal Pepsi ads, including a barely-tweaked spin on “Right Now” by Van Halen. “Clear + Gravy = Clear Gravy,” the spot declares, with Kevin Nealon splashing it on his face and Julia Sweeney dipping a chicken drumstick right into the jar.

But the real pièce de résistance is the gravy cascading over a mound of mashed potatoes, thick and glistening and, it must be said, crystal clear. Not once have I refilled my stupid hand-soap dispenser without thinking about clear gravy in all its luscious, transparent glory.

— Margaret Lyons

As a writer, the comedian Julio Torres brought the avant-garde to 30 Rock with dizzy, bewildering sketches like “The Sink,” which eavesdrops on the inner monologue of a tormented bathroom fixture, and “Papyrus,” about an obsession with the font in the “Avatar” logo. (A special shout-out to “Sara Lee,” starring Harry Styles as a social media manager who uses the food brand’s Instagram account to post comments like “Wreck me daddy.”)

“Wells for Boys,” a 2016 ad starring the host Emma Stone, is more parsable and sweet. (Stone apparently met her now-husband, Dave McCary, while filming the spot.) It advertises a new Fisher-Price play set from the Sensitive Boy line. (Others include a balcony for dramatic announcements and a shattered mirror for existential pondering.)

“Some boys live unexamined lives,” the narrator says as a youngster drapes himself across the molded plastic well. “But this one’s heart is full of questions.”

— Alexis Soloski

2008

Annuale

“You may develop a leathery tail.”

Over the years, the women of “Saturday Night Live” have provided hilarious satire of a very specific genre of commercials: feminine health. I grew up watching ads for female hygiene products and birth control in the ’90s that, looking back, seem like parodies themselves: demure women using lots of euphemisms and pouring lots of blue liquid over chunky pads.

Then came Fey, Poehler, Rudolph, Kate McKinnon and others with these funny and freeing parodies in which the unspoken is not only spoken but amplified. They gave us Nuvabling, a diamond-encrusted birth control device; Autumn’s Eve, a pumpkin spice-scented douche; Woomba, an autonomous vagina vacuum; and Kotex Classic, a reissue of the 1950s sanitary belt … yes, belt. My personal favorite was an ad for Annuale, a birth control pill that gives you a period just once a year. But when you do get it, the ad warns, “hold on to your [expletive] hat.”

It’s always refreshing to see women in the male-dominated world of comedy take on the male-dominated world of advertising and approach these taboo subjects with honesty and hilarity. Period.

— Jolie Ruben

While technically not a commercial spoof, this 1991 video short sent up the Folgers “we switched your coffee” taste test spots, a well-known ad campaign from the 1980s.

The setup here is clever enough: outtakes showing what happens behind the scenes of those ads. But really this is a vehicle for Farley, and it contains arguably his greatest performance — one that is at odds with what he’s best known for.

It’s all about one precise moment — just about the 50 second mark of the video above — when Farley’s standard sheepish smile slowly transforms to a face that expresses shock, disgust and, ultimately, betrayal. That cycle of emotions, all told with his eyes and mouth, has deservedly become an enduring meme.

What comes next is Farley going Full Farley — the screaming, hulking bull-in-a-china-shop physical comedy that nobody could match. But it’s that look in his eyes when he’s told he’s drinking Colombian decaf coffee crystals that makes this an all-timer.

— David Malitz

1998

KCF Shredders

“Get the shred in your head!”

If you happened to hang out in skateparks or among snowboarders in the late ’90s or early ’00s, you likely heard a common refrain: “Get the shred in your head!” Full disclosure: I once wrote it in puff paint on a tank top I would wear to, well, shred. The catchphrase started with this “S.N.L.” ad parody: “KCF Shredders,” from 1998.

In it, Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, Horatio Sanz, Cheri Oteri and other stars of Season 24 can’t get enough Shredders, a mush of “juicy iceberg lettuce and tangy mayo” served in a bag that “will rock your world.” With its neon colors, funky graphics and close-up shots, this spoof about how fast food companies tried to appeal to youth culture is so peak ’90s, it could go in a time capsule — sans mayo, of course.

— Maya Salam