Iceland go All-In with an absolute stomper

Iceland's Moulin Rouge based advert is awful and awesome in equal measure. The use of T-Rex's 20th Century Boy is something of a mixed blessing - fantastic riff well used, but inappropriate to the extreme! Still, much more watchable than Argos' Bing - which is now confirmed to have been withdrawn after a shower of complaints.

John Lewis go for a "John Lewis" type of Christmas advert

OK, perhaps that's too cruel a description of their Xmas ad, but ten seconds into the 60-second ad on the first viewing I was very sure that it was an ad for John Lewis! It's also pretty good, if a little bit obvious for them.

More music channels switch over to Christmas programming

42 days to go, and VH1, MTV Classic, and Smash Hits now feature rather a lot of Christmas videos, joining Bliss which had a two-week head-start on them. With Remembrance Day out of the way, the Christmas run-up is now switching to top gear. Of course, that means that the music videos are a bit obscure at times, with plenty of awful novelty tracks - "Is This The Way To Santa's Grotto?" is just the start of it, so bad that the music video isn't on any of the online video sites. So, I'll just leave this one with you to cringe over...

Dear me...

Cue the Co-Op...

Gabriella Chilme's returned to the annual Christmas gig with "Warm this Christmas" for the Co-Op's Christmas ad campaign. 6 weeks to go...

See the ad at 3m20s in:

Let the third wave commence...

...starting with a newcomer to the Festive Fray: Matalan. It's a great debut:

Have Argos retired Bing off?

No sign of the awful Bing Crosby Argos advert for a few days now - have they retired it out of shame? Here's one of their better Xmas ads from 2007:

Glade's quickie isn't one to be missed

With the second wave of Christmas ads having peaked, it's nice to still have the odd unmissable one to watch out for. Small but perfectly formed, enjoy it at 1m10s into Youtube's XmasTVElf's third collection of Christmas adverts:

Boots' "Here Come The Girls" adverts continue to please and annoy

No sign of the ultra-long Christmas advert yet, but the best of the current ones is the following:

And the most annoying?

Although the tech support ad rings true...

Christmas 24 is on during the November weekends

As mentioned before, Christmas 24 is on now on Sky channels 327 and 328. Put your mind on the hook and let the festiveness wash over you! Although as I said before, don't expect greatness - flicking through the listings on the EPG shows that the movies on this weekend weren't amongst the better ones they showed last December!

More Christmas ads

A quick catch-up of the other Christmas ads that have appeared recently:

Very.co.uk have produced a less annoying advert than the one they produced last year, but the M&S food adverts are just inappropriate with their current disco theme.

Littlewoods have a bit of a grower...

This is warming on me and gets better on each viewing - traditional without being cheesey...

Could this be the new Coca-Cola ad?

Rumours are that this will be shown from mid-December, with last year's trucks ad being shown from mid-November.

It's cute and imaginative - and hooked me in with the snowglobes! We'll see if it gets to Britain...

Hobbycraft recycle last year's ad

And the next wave keeps on coming. I say new - Hobbycraft had the same ad last year - but this still stands up on its own quite well, and gets bonus points for using "Christmas Wrapping" as the background music.

At this rate, the mid-November wave must be either tiny or massive, depending on how you look at it all. Intriguing - at this time of tight purse strings, does the sales sector think we're going to be flexing our credit cards this Christmas?

Tesco makes their play...

...and it's a tad broad - a simple ad with a rip-off of Keeping Up Appearances, but it'll do.

Pringles plays a belter

It's seasonal, it's Christmassy, it has a vague hint of magic thanks to the Nutcracker Suite - it's a perfect festive advert!

The new Marks and Spencer advert is out...

...and it's not entirely festive. Peter Kay plus the M&S regulars dancing to the Bee Gees in various styles. It's well shot and edited, but aside from a load of Santas at the end, it seems out of place. Hmmm. I prefer the Take That and Shirley Bassey ads.

Bliss music channel goes all-Christmas tomorrow!

Bliss music video station (Sky channel 372) is due to switch over to wall-to-wall Christmas music tomorrow from 6am if you believe the Sky EPG. Yikes. Surely one for the channel hoppers out there and for those who want a quick shot of festive music to put them in the mood for Christmas shopping.

Or something.

Still, there are a few festive songs out there which lean towards being more season-neutral. Flying Pickets' "Only You", for instance, plus Paul Young's "Love Of The Common People" - I didn't realise that was a Christmas track until I caught the music video a few years ago, which made me appreciate it even more due to the brass instrumental bit in the middle. But I'm struggling to come up with other low-festive Christmas tracks.

Although it does give me an excuse to indulge in a guilty pleasure - I love this track, and I really shouldn't: Bo Selecta's "Proper Chrimbo". Enjoy...

SONY doesn't quite get it right

A bit of an oddity with SONY's Christmas advert - sure, it's a re-telling of a Christmas Carol, it gets the imagery right, and the script's not bad, but it doesn't seem to hang together very well and it's not entirely imaginative. Here's the full two-minute version:

Class under "appropriate, but not great".

The IKEA extravaganza

IKEA have produced the next big surprise, with a sixty-second advert advertising their wares as a music video to the old Jona "Stop The Cavalry" Lewie track "You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties". Whilst not explictly Christmassy, it does hit the party season quite nicely.

It looks like a re-recording of the track, and they used Lewie himself in the track and video, which is a very nice touch - usually advertisers just licence a track and soullessly remix it. The SRS furniture commercial didn't even go that far with their current commercial - they just used a loop of the old Tom Jones track "What's New Pussycat?" on repeat. I'm sure he'll thank them for that.

IKEA and Jona Lewie seem to go together like bacon and sweet red peppers, though, and the full-sized three-minute version is well worth a viewing.

"Bacon and sweet red peppers"? Try them both grilled, with the peppers thinly sliced, and eat whilst warm in a sandwich. If you're feeling adventurous, add sweet chilli sauce. Your taste buds will love you for it.

The "big" Christmas toys announced

The news wires are currently breaking the Toy Retailers Association's press release about what it thinks are the big toys kids are going to want this year. Yes, Christmas List season has begun. I remember as a kid being handed the Argos catalogue by my parents and asked to highlight what I wanted for Christmas. Back then, the catalogue was only half an inch thick, but we still thought it was massive - after all, it was about 300 pages long.

I went to Argos yesterday to get a few things for the house - their Christmas catalogue today is about the size of what their full catalogue was when I was a child! I took that plus the main catalogue home with me - I needed to carry it in a double plastic bag it was so big. Two inches thick, and a good 1500+ pages in length. Resting it on its edge on my lap whilst browsing it hurt - proof if ever if was needed that you now need to be a masochist to shop at Argos.

Anyway, here's the list:

• City Airport, Lego UK (£84.99)
• Fireman Sam Deluxe Fire Station Playset, Character Options (£29.99)
• FurReal Go Go Walking Pup, Hasbro (£59.99)
• Jet Pack Buzz Lightyear, Mattel UK (£39.99)
• Kidizoom VideoCam, VTech (£59.99)
• Monopoly Revolution, Hasbro (£29.99)
• Moon Dough Barn, Spinmaster Toys UK (£19.99)
• Nerf N Strike Stampede ECS, Hasbro (£54.99)
• Paper Jamz Guitar, Wow Wee Europe (£24.99)
• 'Pumpaloons' - action game, Drumond Park (£19.99)
• Sylvanian Families Motorcycle and Sidecar, Flair Leisure (£24.99)
• ZhuZhu Grooming Salon, Character Options (£22.99)

...although it's all Greek to me. The BBC have put up a slideshow so you can see how weird toys have become these days.