It's going to be sweaty and dirty, but oh-so-great-smelling later today when the old and new 'Old Spice' guys go at each other in the bathroom.

That's right: Isaiah Mustafa has accepted his successor Fabio's challenge to a duel. The two hunks, tongues squarely in cheeks, will face off at 12PM ET Tuesday, in the online showdown billed as "Mano a Mano in El Baño."

Fabio issued the challenge yesterday with the aid of two comedy duelling pistols and Mustafa quickly accepted, ridiculing his opponent's tactics: "A real man would have challenged me to a duel with a left-to-right slap across the face."

Watch the hilarious videos after the jump.

It's no secret Oprah Winfrey is a major power player in the industry, but this latest news is still surprising. Commercial spots during the series finale of 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' are commanding $1 million a pop -- yes, 30-second ads.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, that's close to par with the finales for beloved sitcoms 'Everybody Loves Raymond' ($1.22 million) and 'Seinfeld' ($1.42 million).

Last year's 'Lost' finale pulled in $900,000 per spot.

However, the 'Friends' finale saw advertisers paying $2.4 million for a 30-second ad. More than 50 million viewers watched the episode.

You may not know what a Choddy is by name, but you've seen them everywhere on your TV screen.

They're not hard to spot: they're commercials -- mostly PSAs -- that have the same format: They depict a combination of people, shot from the waist up against a bland background, looking straight into the camera while giving a piece of the ad's copy. The ad is edited to make it sound like one complete statement.

Choddies are so pervasive that a website was created to help stop the trend. Stop the Choddy, which looks like it was set up by a consortium of creative types at small advertising firms and production companies, documents what the elements of a Choddy are -- apparently, one of them is the presence of Whoopi Goldberg -- and asks users to send in examples of Choddies found in the wild. Oh, and they also sell t-shirts and trucker caps. What's an internet meme without merchandising attached?

Why do I feel like I've just been manipulated?

Nike has just released its first post-scandal Tiger Woods commercial and Tiger doesn't say a word. Instead, we hear the voice of his late father, Earl Woods.

As any 'Flight of the Conchords' fan knows, when you hire Murray Hewitt -- talent manager and occasional New Zealand diplomat -- you get round-the-clock commitment, rabid enthusiasm and an extreme belief in your greatness. But let's not dwell on the negative.

After all, Murray (or someone an awful lot like him) is hanging out these days with real movers and shakers. Fortune 500 techno-giant Hewlett Packard is featuring 'Conchords' comic Rhys Darby in a series of witty ads under the banner "Let's Do Amazing." ('Conchords' duo Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie pulled the plug on the show in December). It's hard to think of another example of a TV character-inspired pitchman, but the move is genius (there was "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." Uh, nah.)

It took a year to get that low-fi, Casio-keyboard jingle out of your head. Big Mouth Billy Bass and floating Filet-O-Fish sandwiches even appeared in your nightmares. Now, just when you thought it was safe to watch commercials again, McDonalds' strikes again.

"Give me back that Filet-O-Fish, give me that fish (oooooo!)"

In the era of DVRs and online streaming, it's getting more and more difficult for advertisers to find a way to get viewers to sit through their commercials. One trick that always works is to make a brilliant commercial. Old Spice has managed that in a short spot that almost defies description.

On the air less than a month, we can't even tell you exactly what it is about the commercial that makes it so amazing, but we'll give a lot of the credit to the acting performance by Isaiah Mustafa, the man your man isn't.

Super Bowl time is almost upon us and with it a veritable plethora of clever television commercials (which is the only reason I watch the Super Bowl). Super Bowl ads also have the reputation of being the most expensive television commercials for the year. However, this year that is not quite as true this year because, for the second time in history, prices for Super Bowl ads have dropped from the previous year.

Given these hard times, I'm curious about which sponsors will even run commercials for the game. Big names like GM and Pepsi aren't even advertising. It would be sort of cool if AT&T and Verizon would continue their ad war through the Super Bowl.

In TV Squad's continued efforts to share the best and worst of TV commercials with you, here's one that's currently airing that's just terrific. Jim Gaffigan for eBay. Think harder. That's his advice for people who are trying to figure out what to buy him for Christmas.

Gaffigan is hilarious with that dry sense of humor and the furrowed brow. How much you want to bet he's been there when it comes to getting crappy gifts. You know, like a coffee mug that looks like it must have been re-gifted from an office birthday party. Or the jewelry box that's too ugly to be put on your dresser. Or a Chatty Cathy doll you received when your parents knew you weren't interested in playing with dolls.

Oops, that last one was a personal one of mine.

The new Target holiday ads are out, and if you've been scratching your head, trying to figure out who that vaguely familiar-looking woman is who's playing that competitive and slightly demented Black Friday shopper, scratch no longer.

It's Maria Bamford, the cute but decidedly off-kilter stand-up comedian who is probably best known for participating in the Comedians of Comedy tour with Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, and Brian Posehn.

Most of the ads show Bamford playing the competitive shopper, pulling full Target carts uphill and sleeplessly decorating a gingerbread village in preparation for the store's big Black Friday sale. But in some of the spots, Bamford also plays the woman's more "normal" sister, who doesn't need to be there as soon as the doors open. Problem is, she also puts her wreath up using a staple gun. So how normal can she be? One of the ads is below, and a couple of more are after the jump:

Controversy raged last weekend as fans and media types reacted to a new DirecTV ad using the late Chris Farley in scenes from Tommy Boy. Now, some aggressive YouTubers are taking their shot at offending some people (with DirecTV execs at the top of the list).

The original ad featured a live action David Spade discussing DirecTV against Farley's antics from Tommy Boy. While Spade insisted Farley wouldn't mind, a lot of his fans took offense to using a dead man to hawk a product.

But the video below, from a YouTube page, The Landline, lights up the satellite TV provider with an edgy send-up of the "dead talk cash" stunt with faked DirecTV ads featuring a pseudo Heath Ledger, John F. Kennedy, and someone else you'll recognize.

There's a conspiracy theory floating around that this is actually clever viral marketing from DirecTV itself -- since no publicity is bad publicity. But, if that were true, and word really got out, it'd be "deadly" to the company's business.

There are many phrases I hear on the news and in commercials that I find annoying, painful, and simply illogical. This is one of the worst offenders.

I was watching a commercial today for a bank and the woman in the commercial said that the bank was "the number one online banking web site." Which got me wondering: what's the number one banking web site that's not online?

Patrick Warburton has made a career out of playing the smug and clueless jerk everyone loves to laugh at on shows like Seinfeld, Less than Perfect and Rules of Engagement. I guess that's why Apple thought he'd be the perfect guy to play a "top of the line" PC in the latest Mac ad:



I love these simple and amusing Get a Mac ads, but this is probably one of my favorites of the bunch. I never imagined this before, but now I can see the hammy Warburton maybe playing a self-important '60s commercial actor on Mad Men, or at least starring in an SNL-style Mad Men parody.

As I've mentioned here several times before, I'm a huge fan of TV commercials, especially the history and what goes on behind the scenes of campaigns and slogans (I think it's 60% why Mad Men is one of my favorite shows). Advertising Week wants you to vote in their poll to name the best advertising icons of all-time and the best slogans of all-time. This poll happens every year, and you can see past winners who are now in the Walk of Fame at the link above.

This year the choices include Ronald McDonald (as well as the slogan "I'm Lovin' It"), that creepy Burger King guy, the Maytag repairman, Snap, Crackle, and Pop, "Got Milk" and more.

Those FreeCreditReport.com guys have been on my snark radar for a long time. But I deactivated my head-mounted quip laser and turned the sarcasm cannon over to "stealth mode" when the ads came up because it seemed like a little, heh, overkill.

Sure, the ads are designed to be hokey and cheesy so they'll get your attention and get guys like me writing about them, scoring tons of free publicity that only a corporate-sponsored puppy flood could replicate. If anything, they should be applauded for being ridiculously short.

But the latest song from the FreeCreditReport.com "band" has been playing more frequently than the others and its incessant tune feels like a cheese grater being rubbed against my ear drum. So I turned on the sniper scope and aimed directly for the spot between each of their glazed-over eyes.