NBC - Super Bowl XLVIII Commercials: Families, Beasts and Sitcoms

The stars of Super Bowl XLVIII may nominally have been the Seattle Seahawks’ stunning defense (and maybe Bruno Mars) — but in between the play, the game’s most celebrated faces may well have been those of the one-time stars of some favorite sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s.

From “Full House” to “Seinfeld,” “Alf” to “The Muppets,” some of the game’s biggest commercials were full-on nostalgia trips and tributes to TV shows of yore, replete with a couple of partial cast reunions.

Most anticipated among them was the long-teased promise of a “Seinfeld” reunion, or something like it, thanks to an extended promo for a special episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”

That promo showed Jerry reluctantly telling George (Jason Alexander) he wasn’t welcome at a Super Bowl party, just before a run-in with reliable annoyance Newman at their long-time diner hangout. (Check back for a video.) What might happen, and who might show up, in the full “Comedians” episode is anyone’s guess.

Another long-gone sitcom got a reunion of sorts of its own thanks to Dannon Oikos’ suggestive new ad, which reunited a still-perfectly-coiffed John Stamos, aka Uncle Jesse, with one-time “Full House” co-stars Dave Coulier, aka Joey, and reluctant host Bob Saget, aka Danny Tanner: Stamos, flirting with a woman amid some suggestive yogurt-eating, winds up losing both his pants (to his clean-freak roommates) and the object of his interest.

A Radio Shack ad reached even further back into dormant pop cultural touchstones and recruited a who’s-who of ’80s relics — from gymnast Mary Lou Retton to Hulk Hogan to Twisted Sister’s Dee Snyder to the California Raisins to not-quite-human Alf, of his eponymous sitcom, to “Child’s Play” villain Chucky — to help poke fun at its fuddy-duddy image, and announce an update to it.