Bald eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd: is Budweiser’s all-American Super Bowl ad serious?

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Featuring an unlikely animal friendship, the commercial boasts enough patriotic iconography to verge on self-parodyThree years after its sister brand, Bud Light, faced a rightwing boycott over a transgender spokesperson, Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, American Icons, contains absolutely nothing that could be mistaken for social progress.Instead, it features an unlikely friendship between two animals whose blood runs red, white and blue: a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse, the Budweiser icon.An adorable foal trots out of a barn, and the viewer is injected with a single minute of American iconography so pure that it would make Lee Greenwood nauseous.The horse meets a struggling baby bird who gets caught in the rain, prompting the horse to stand over the bird as a roof.The pair become pals and grow up together, the bird riding on the horse’s back as it grows larger.

It falls off a few times, but, like George Washington at Valley Forge, it never gives up.Finally, the horse jumps over a log while the bird spreads its wings above, and we get a slow-motion image of something like Pegasus.We realize the bird, now fully grown, is a majestic bald eagle, taking to the sky as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird reaches its climax.Two farmers look on while drinking Budweiser, as the words “Made of America” appear on the screen.“You crying?” one asks.

“The sun’s in my eyes,” says the other.Budweiser are hoping it will cause a similarly teary reaction in viewers.They might be right: animals and nostalgia are key elements of a winning Super Bowl ad, according to an analysis of 500 ads at the University of Virginia, and Forbes’s Pamela N Danziger expects the Pegasus ad – officially titled American Icons – to be the Super Bowl’s most popular.The focus on a universally beloved phenomenon – unlikely animal friendships – comes after a Bud Light promotion in 2023 led to one of American history’s biggest brand boycotts.Dylan Mulvaney, a social media star who is trans, talked up the beer in a 60-second video posted only to social media.

Afterwards, rightwing personalities including Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene lashed out; Kid Rock fired a gun at cans of Bud Light.In the four weeks ending on 3 June, sales of both Bud Light and Budweiser plummeted 24.6% and 9.2% respectively; to add insult to injury, Modelo, Bud Light’s Mexican rival, took over as America’s bestselling beer, with 8.4% of the US market share to Bud Light’s 7.

3%.Within weeks, Budweiser returned to horse-forward, aggressively American marketing, releasing an ad featuring a Clydesdale visiting the Lincoln Memorial.Since then, Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercials have stuck with the equine theme.A 2024 spot also plays the hits, with a dog-horse alliance and several hardworking white men in baseball caps.In 2025, a horse who understands beer’s symbolic value delivered a forgotten keg to hardworking white men in baseball caps.

The Clydesdales are nothing new, of course; they’ve been part of the Super Bowl for decades and associated with Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser’s manufacturer, for even longer.But a look through recent Super Bowl ads pre- and post-boycott does suggest a shift: a 2019 ad celebrates wind power, while ads from 2021 and 2023, before the controversy, want us to know that diverse people from all walks of life love a Budweiser.Bud Light, meanwhile, followed the Mulvaney backlash with an ad featuring a bunch of men grunting.One of them was Travis Kelce, and another NFL star, Peyton Manning, returns to advertise the brand for this year’s Super Bowl.He’s joined by the comedian Shane Gillis, “who’s about the opposite of Dylan Mulvaney”, as Anson Frericks, a former Anheuser-Busch executive, told Fox Business last year.

(Gillis came to national attention in 2019 after he was dropped from Saturday Night Live over racist remarks on a podcast.)As the US is torn apart, the year’s ad reads like a parody of patriotic imagery: the bird, the beer, the great American song that has become the butt of classic-rock jokes.The mythical vision of America so many of us were raised on feels like a surreal relic in 2026.Perhaps it’s brilliant marketing: America’s hardcore fans can take it literally, while those dismayed at what’s happening all around us can take it as satire.And then we can all have a beer.

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How to make moreish cookies from store-cupboard odds and ends – recipe | Waste not

I often eat a bag of salty crisps at the same time as a chewy chocolate bar, alternating bite for bite between the two, because the extreme contrast of salt from the chips and the sweetness of the chocolate fire off each other and create an endorphin rush. The same goes for these cookies, adapted from a recipe by Christina Tosi at New York’s legendary Milk Bar.Christina Tosi writes in Gourmet Traveller Australia how she first learned to make these cookies at a conference centre on Star Island, New England, where they’d bake them each week with a hodge-podge of different ingredients. Being on an island, they didn’t always have access to what they wanted, so they had to come up with a new recipe every week using whatever they had. In the spirit of the recipe’s origins, I’ve adapted Tosi’s recipe for the UK, and made it flexible, so you can raid your own store-cupboards and adapt and invent your own version from it

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Camilla Wynne’s recipes for blood orange marmalade and no-bake marmalade mousse tart

If you’re intimidated by making marmalade, the whole-fruit method is the perfect entry point. Blood oranges are simmered whole until soft, perfuming your home as they do so, then they’re sliced, skin and all, mixed with sugar and a fragrant cinnamon stick, and embellished with a shot of amaro. Squirrel the jars away for a grey morning, give a few to deserving friends, and be sure to keep at least one to make this elegant mocha marmalade mousse tart. A cocoa biscuit crust topped with a chocolate marmalade mousse and crowned with a cold brew coffee cream, it’s a delightful trifecta of bitterness that no one will ever guess is an easy no-bake dessert.If you’re not up for preserving, make this using shop-bought thick-cut marmalade

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The dump dinner: spaghetti is now being served straight on to the table – but why?

Name: Dump dinners.Age: Horribly new.Appearance: Feeding time at the zoo, but for humans.I’ve just Googled this. Apparently a dump dinner is a make-ahead slow cooker recipe

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Australian supermarket coconut water taste test: ‘Smells like an island holiday’

Overcoming his irrational fear of coconut products, Nicholas Jordan tests a lovely – and lowly – bunch of coconuts in a rowIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI have a fear of coconut products. Like all fears it’s based on a questionable rationale and trauma, and my trauma is taste testing “health” coconut-heavy products that taste like soap. Which is why, until recently, almost all the coconut water I’d drunk was from a straw reaching out of a fresh coconut.Surely there’s no way a bottled coconut water, made from 100% coconut, could be that bad. Maybe it could be better than the real thing? I enjoy Melona more than the average honeydew melon

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Miso mystery: red, white or yellow – how does each paste change your dish? | Kitchen aide

What’s the difference between white and red miso, and which should I use for what? Why do some recipes not specify which miso to use? Ben, by email“I think what recipe writers assume – and I’m sure I’ve written recipes like this – is that either way, you’re not going to get a miso that’s very extreme,” says Tim Anderson, whose latest book, JapanEasy Kitchen: Simple Recipes Using Japanese Pantry Ingredients, is out in April. As Ben points out, the two broadest categories are red and white, and in a lot of situations “you can use one or other to your taste without it having a massive effect on the outcome of the dish”.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

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The pie and mash crisis: can the original fast food be saved?

There used to be hundreds of pie and mash shops in London. Now there are barely more than 30. Can social media attention and a push for protected status ensure their survival?Outside it’s raining so hard that the sandwich board sign for BJ’s pie and mash (“All pies are made on the premises”) is folded up inside. The pavement along Barking Road in Plaistow is a blur through the front windows and deserted, and there are only two customers in the shop. Another sign – this one on the counter – says “CASH ONLY”