The Wild Super Bowl Ads Where They Actually Shot a Lock on Camera
What To Know
- Master Lock’s iconic 1974 Super Bowl ad, which showed a padlock surviving a direct rifle shot, revolutionized Super Bowl advertising by proving product strength in a dramatic, memorable way.
- The company ran variations of the “Tough Under Fire” campaign for over a decade, contributing to a surge in annual sales from $35 million in 1973 to $200 million in 1994 and establishing Master Lock as a market leader.
- Although Master Lock eventually shifted its advertising strategy, it honored the legacy of the original ad in 2021 with a digital short film for its centennial, reinforcing its brand identity of resilience and strength.
If you grew up in the 1970s, you probably remember the early Master Lock Super Bowl ads. In the early era of Super Bowl advertising, most commercials were straightforward product pitches. But in 1974, Master Lock ran a spot during Super Bowl VIII that changed expectations for what a brand could do with 30 seconds of national television time. In the commercial, a high-powered rifle fired a bullet directly into a Master Lock padlock. The bullet punched a hole through the center of the lock, but the lock still functioned; it didn’t open. The visual was dramatic but straightforward, and the tagline “Tough Under Fire” was seared into audience’s brains.
Rather than a spokesperson talking about strength, the commercial proved the point by subjecting the product to extreme conditions on national TV. While many famous Super Bowl spots, like the 1979 Coca-Cola ad with “Mean” Joe Greene or Wendy’s 1984 Where’s the Beef? campaigns were essentially one-shot deals, Master Lock chose a path of consistency. The Milwaukee-based security company ran the “Tough Under Fire” spot every year for nearly a decade, from 1974 to 1983. They followed this with a variation featuring a marksman that aired until 1985.
The commercials actually had a massive business impact. Between 1973 and 1994, Master Lock’s annual sales skyrocketed from roughly $35 million to about $200 million. Industry commentators directly link this growth to the visibility and memorability created by the Super Bowl spots, which helped establish Master Lock as the world’s largest manufacturer of padlocks.
By the late 1990s, Master Lock shifted its strategy. In 1998, during Super Bowl XXXII, they condensed the famous bullet-through-lock moment into a one-second “blipvert.” While they took a break for many years from showing ads at the Super Bowl, in 2021 for their centennial, they paid homage to the classic ad by featuring the sharpshooter footage in a digital short film alongside their original lion logo, which founder Harry Soref chose to represent resilience and strength.
Remind 
1970s Fall TV
September 2023
Take a trip back to the ’70s by looking at the TV Guide Magazine Fall Preview primetime lineups.
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