With manufacturing and jobs hot topics in the current elections, it was not surprising to see a healthy representation of American manufacturing in last night’s Super Bowl commercials.

General Electric aired two spots focusing on its appliances and energy-generation products and the people and facilities that make them. GE is a well-known casting customer—I’ve seen parts headed for its various applications on many a foundry visit.

Hyundai’s Rocky-themed commercial depicted an engineer struggling with a component design and encouraged by a chorus of Hyundai assembly plant workers, office peers and car salespeople. Was that a cast wheel I spotted in the engineer’s cubicle?

Chrysler’s Imported From Detroit ad featuring Clint Eastwood includes shots of large furnaces full of molten metal and assembly line workers building Chrysler vehicles. The automaker has made significant investments in its North American manufacturing plants as a whole in the last two years, including $27.2 million to its Etobicoke Casting Plant in Toronto and more than $300 million in its Kokomo, Ind., transmission plants, which includes a separate casting operation.

--by Shannon Wetzel, digital managing editor