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 Still, much more watchable than Argos' Bing - which is now confirmed to have been withdrawn after a shower of complaints.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.

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...

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.

The calm before the storm

OK, so we've had the first wave of Christmas commercials, with the very nicely done IKEA musical number appearing on high-rotation, but this is just the beginning. Usually everything kicks off soon after November 11th, once Remembrance Day is out of the way, and we still haven't seen M&S and Tesco (amongst others) play their hands yet.

That's a good enough pretext for a bit of nostalgia, isn't it? Here's a selection of ads from 1983. There's a bit of everything: booze, chocs, presents, and rounding off with a Woolworths Christmas ad the like of which we haven't seen from them for decades, nor will we do so again post-administration.

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 first surprise of 2010...

The great thing about the Christmas run-up is that advertisers loosen up their wallets a bit and splash out on grandiose advertising campaigns. Sometimes they miss the mark, as Argos have done this year, but when they hit the sweet spot it's a joy to watch.

Currys (or Currys PC World as they're called now) have a Star Wars licence, and have used it well. C3-PO and R2-D2 discover the store and have a mini-adventure. It's cute, it's sweet, and it's actually funny. Naturally there's a Director's Cut - it wouldn't be Star Wars otherwise - on YouTube, and here it is in all its 72-second glory:

Holidays are coming...

With the Christmas TV ad campaigns starting to whirr up, there is one global event to watch out for - something which confirms that the Christmas is on its way.

The Coca-Cola Christmas trucks advert.

No sighting of them yet this year, but someone on Youtube has produced a high-definition remix of their previous ads:

It may be a little overdone on the schmaltz, but I love the imagery used.

DFS are learning...

DFS use Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" tune in their Xmas adverts, and this song is one of those which should be used in small doses, so hearing it over and over at full blast and full swing throughout October, November and December can make you want to reach for the chainsaw. This year, they seem to have toned down the tune with a slight remix and a severe drop in volume. It's nicely underplayed, and quite watchable as a result. OK, so it's a sale advert, and therefore by definition relatively boring, but it's alright.