It's been a while for this series, what with the busy weekends that exist during football season. Not to fear, there's more to come (including the buffoons at Campbell's Soup and Valtrex), but there's something else more pressing going down.

Taco Bell has had a long run of respectable advertising, going way back ... can you believe it's now been a decade since this little goofball appeared on our TV screens?

The Mexican food chain dearest to our hearts has had varying success since then, with some ads occasionally good for some laughs, like the lions:

(Sorry, I still chuckle at that. "Car-Ricardo Montalban?") Taco Bell has not been having the best of decades, what with rats in their restaurants and whatnot, and advertising has become more challenging now that TiVo and DVR have helped to eliminate the concept of "prime advertising space." How are people combating that? Product placement within a show! I'm sorry though, this is really, really pushing it.

FOX has forever been trying to come up with new widgets and gizmos to increase their sports viewership (glowing pucks, anyone?), namely baseball, and perhaps free food is a decent reason for people to watch.

First, let's look at the concept. If a player steals a base during the 2007 World Series, everybody wins a free taco. This is quite a reach by Taco Bell. First of all, they are already known for their relatively cheap fast food menu, so is free really that big a deal? When a majority of the individual items on your menu are less than $2, I don't really expect a sudden surge in business from free food. Second - surprise surprise - the free taco is just a plain crunchy taco, one of the cheapest items at only 99 cents. I'm going to get all jazzed up over getting a free taco instead of a one dollar taco? I'm not that cheap.

Of course, the details of the promotion aren't nearly as pathetic as the execution. Let's start with this one:

First of all, why is Royce Clayton wearing a microphone? Take a look, this isn't just a dugout mic picking up conversation, there's a microphone 'hidden' under Royce's warmup jacket as he nonchalantly asks Jacoby Ellsbury, "You like Taco Bell?" That's strike one right there. Usually, during normal games, the network will put microphones on players who are, y'know, actually in the game.

Clayton is a career .258 average, .679 OPS hitter who played so poorly that he was DFA'ed by the Toronto Blue Jays at the beginning of August. For those of you newer to baseball, that means the team basically said 'we don't want you anymore, find somewhere else to play.' The Red Sox signed him to a minor league contract and brought him up at the end of August, and he got six pinch-hit at-bats. He's not playing unless both starting middle infielders get hurt. He's not someone who would usually be mic'd up.