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00:00The Christmas advert is one of the great modern British traditions,
00:03and the festive season truly hasn't begun until Santa Claus has delivered the new
00:08John Lewis campaign. That, and until we see him driving across our screen in the Coca-Cola truck,
00:13of course. But, with so many adverts dropping each year, it means that all favourites can get
00:19lost in the sands of time. So we decided to dive back into the history books and pick out three
00:24classics from the last decade that you might have forgot about, but you probably shouldn't.
00:30So first up is this advert which dates back to 2011, so more than a decade ago now,
00:36and it's so long ago that it dropped that you might have forgot about it,
00:38but it was an instant classic at the time it arrived. It used the characters and the art
00:43style from the beloved children's animated film The Snowman, which is obviously a seasonal
00:48favourite, but it put a dark humour spin on it and a bit of Scottish flair to sell some iron brew.
00:55It was so popular at the time that Iron Brew actually went back and made a sequel
01:00in sort of about 2016, the mid-2010s, which you might remember more, but yeah, this initial one
01:06was one of the big early Christmas adverts and you should check it out if you haven't seen it,
01:11or if you just need a refresher. The John Lewis Christmas advert has been an annual
01:15tradition since 2007, but it wasn't really until 2012's offering, The Journey, that it truly popped
01:22off and became the British institution that we know it is now, telling the epic story of
01:29a snowman's mammoth journey to go Christmas shopping for his wife. It was such a hit that
01:34the soundtrack, Gabrielle Applin's cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love,
01:41actually hit number one on the UK singles chart and sort of set a precedent for future John Lewis
01:47Christmas advert songs to also rocket up the charts after release. And they even sort of
01:55rushed out the children's book based on the advert because it was so popular and that hit the shelves
02:01not long after, which shows just how popular it was at the time. But you might have lost, you know,
02:06you might not have seen it because of Monty and Box of the Dog and all those other favourites that
02:12have come afterwards, but this is really worth watching and it sort of set the standard for what
02:17the John Lewis Christmas advert would be. It's hard to believe, but it's almost been a decade
02:22since Sainsbury's dropped this festive masterpiece. Inspired by the 100 year anniversary of the start
02:28of the First World War, it retells the amazing true life story of the Christmas truce. So this
02:34was when British and, well, British allied and German forces stopped fighting on Christmas Eve
02:43and then on Christmas Day as well, and they actually got out of the trenches and started
02:47playing football with each other. And this is depicted in the advert and it sort of focuses
02:52on a British troop and a German troop and they end up swapping presents, sort of, they give each
02:58other a little gift. One of them is a chocolate bar from Sainsbury's and they sold that at the
03:03time, I remember the supermarkets had that. But yeah, it's a real tearjerker, it's a real emotional
03:09one. And to be honest, I'm not sure any Christmas adverts ever topped it, but that's me speaking
03:16personally. So these are three really classic Christmas adverts that you might have forgot about.
03:21Let us know your favourites.