ADVERTISING Some Super Bowl spots aim below the belt to pitch their products

Pepsi ads used a musical theme to promote both soda and Apple's iTunes.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Even before the football teams came close to scoring, some of the high-priced commercials were racking up points Sunday night. But some of the hits were a little cheap.
There was plenty of aiming for a certain area of male anatomy, and not just by the makers of drugs for erectile dysfunction.
In a telecast that featured commercials for two of the three drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, Bud Light scored early with two amusing ads. Both focused on men suffering painful experiences of a different sort down there.
The ads
One spot featured two guys at a hunting camp comparing their canines' talents. One has a dog that fetches a Bud Light from a cooler. "What can your dog do?" asks the pleased owner. "Bud Light," commands the man wanting a beer, prompting his scroungy pooch to lunge for the pants of the other guy, who squeals and flings his bottle.
In the other ad, comedian Cedric the Entertainer wanders into the wrong room at a spa while waiting for his massage, distracted on his way by a refrigerator loaded with Bud Light. The puzzled attendant gives him the treatment -- a bikini wax.
"Is there a breeze in here?" Cedric asks afterward, sitting in a bathrobe.
Sierra Mist soda explored the same territory. And one can only hope Wallace, the kilt-wearing bagpiper in their ad, is wearing a certain piece of football gear as he gets relief from the heat by exposing himself to blasts of frigid air from a subway grate. A boy looking on says, "That's just wrong, Dad."
CBS charged $2.3 million this year for each 30-second spot, up from $2.2 million last year. The commercials command such steep prices because the broadcast commands a unique audience: more than 100 million viewers who don't channel-surf for four-plus hours.
Moreover, in numerous surveys each January, more than a quarter of Americans say they tune in solely for the commercials.
Additional products
The American Legacy Foundation offered an elaborate anti-smoking spot featuring Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops, a treat with glass frozen inside. "What if all companies sold products like tobacco?" the close-out line asks.
Pharmaceutical giants Bayer AG and GlaxoSmithKline hired former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka to tout their new anti-impotence drug, Levitra, by noting some differences between football and baseball. One is played in all sorts of weather, with a markedly different pace, Ditka notes, taking a swipe at the summer sport.
"Baseball could use Levitra," Ditka concludes.
The newest entrant in that prescription drug category, Cialis, offers romantic scenes of couples in a commercial that asks: "If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?"
Apple Computer and Pepsico used the game to kick off their iTunes music store promotion -- and to tweak the recording industry's legal assault on Internet song-swapping by featuring 16 teens the industry sued last year over their illegal downloading. The companies are awarding 100 million song downloads from the Apple retail site through bottle tops.
Keeping to its musical theme this Super Bowl, Pepsi imagined the day an 11-year-old James Marshall Hendrix contemplates an electric guitar in the window of a Seattle shop located near a Pepsi vending machine. Nearby, a Coke machine sits outside a store selling an accordion.
"Whew ... that was a close one," reads the ending graphic, after the soundtrack offers a taste of how an accordion can mangle "Purple Haze."