What do you do when you’ve blown a sizeable chunk of the marketing budget on a splendid advertising campaign for a product you don’t actually have enough of to satisfy demand? Hmm…

That’s the very problem facing Nintendo right now – lovely TV campaign crafted by London’s trendy Karmarama media agency but nothing on the UK Wii retail shelves save for an icy wind, the occasional bundle of ragged tumbleweed and the sound of a lone church bell, clanging mournfully in the distance. Well, that’s what it’s like at our local shop.

Anyway, faced with such a dilemma and in spite of apparently knocking Wii’s out at a rate of 1.8 million units a month, Nintendo has done the “responsible” thing and pulled its Wii advertising until such time that this unprecedented/(some might say)unwarranted demand abates, which will likely be some time in early 2008. In the meantime the Wii ad campaign has been put on ice (fortunately it's not season-specific) and you can expect to see a lot more DS Lite advertising in its place – they’re in plentiful supply, y’see.

So does that make you feel any better? Will you feel any less like buying a Wii now that you can’t see them on the telly? Yeah, we thought not…