I was waiting for the inevitable 'tragic victim of consumer orgy' story to pop up. :/

From what I have seen and heard the two most bought items have been 42 inch hdtvs and xbox arcades.

Look, I just don't understand guys dying and pregnant women getting trampled.

I'd just spend the extra 100 bucks and wait, to not be involved in this craziness. How do you get hyped up about these deals that you fight fellow humans at the store over things? I'm not that type of person. I'd just pay the full price.

It is really these stores faults. You should be able to register early for those deals, and it shouldn't be: first trample, first served.

@Zenfoldor: some stores, like Toys 'R Us, actually do have rules in place. They only allowed a certain number of people in at a time for a limited time at the ones in NYC. Not that this would have made a difference. Check the story again, it says that the crowd broke in before the store had even opened. That's why I avoid stores at all cost on this day.

OT: My only experience happened online. I saw a really good deal for a 10 megapixel digital camera. It was to go on sale earlier today at 12am. I kept refreshing the page, waiting for it to change from 'sale on Nov. 28th' to 'Purchase Now'. I am sad to say, that after like 10 refreshes, it said 'Sold out online'. I was like wtf? When? How? Lol. So yeah, no camera for me.

If you guys want to avoid the madness, help the site, and make our sample data a bit larger, buy products on our VGC Amazon Store for Cyber Monday (or whenever).

2 more killed on black friday

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/two-killed-calif-toys-r/story.aspx?guid={622FCF6A-2C2B-4CFB-AE07-7F9FE4BF4F04}

"Two killed in Calif. Toys 'R' Us shooting: reports"

Not really video game related, but at my Target The Office (seasons 1-3) House (seasons 1-3) as well as pretty much all the Gilmore Girls Box sets (seasons 1-7) were cleaned out. I was essentially throwing them at people to keep them from swarming me. We also had (roughly) 60 29 inch HD TVs that lasted maybe an hour tops.

Guitar Hero and Rock Bands were really hot item this year. We just pushed out flatbeds of them and let people go to town. We seemed to have sold way more Wii Guitar Heroes then the PS3 and Xbox versions, but that may have been because we had that many more of them in stock. I didn't really get to see how consoles were being sold though as there was a human wall in the way most of the day, but I assume the 360 did pretty good as we had a ton coming in to today. Plus that was the system that was being pushed the most in our ads.

Also, anyone that leaves DVDs in other parts of the store when they decide they don't actually want them? Yeah, those come back to me, and then I have to listen to people bitching about how I didn't have them five minutes ago, but have them now so I must be holding out on them. Thanks for that. I had five shopping carts filled with stuff that other team members found hidden through out the store come back to me within the first 3 hours.

^^Eek. Sorry to hear you had to work in that mayhem. On the bright side, you're ok.

Yeah, working retail sucks ass in general.  Black Friday is exponentially worse.