'Zhu-Zhu' toy a symbol of Black Friday spending

This is America, and you can't keep shoppers from buying their remote-control hamsters.

"Zhu-Zhu" the scruffy little $8 battery-powered rodent proved a popular harbinger of holiday spending, drawing thousands of shoppers to toy stores across the nation.

"It was horrible ... you couldn't move," said Lisa Westerman, amid the frenzied crowd going after items including the stacks of Zhu-Zhus at Toys "R" Us in Wesley Chapel.

Fueled by yesterday's turkey, clad in running shoes, and clutching glossy circulars as battle plans, hordes of shoppers encircled stores long before dawn's early light broke on Black Friday in America.

They swooped like hungry seagulls into Walmart, BestBuy, Ikea, Gymboree and dozens of other targets, hunting for discounted HDTVs, action figures, couches and elusive netbook computers.

They elbowed through crowds, snatched a deal and text messaged about their victory as they zoomed off - the most aggressive among them hitting a half dozen stores or more.

"This is our last stop of the day," said Richard Javinett at 9 a.m., helping load two $99 TV credenzas and two $99 coffee tables on a rolling cart at Ikea. "We've already been to Sports Authority, Citrus Park mall, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens. I think that's it."

Still, even amid the frenzy, the recession wasn't far from many shoppers' minds.

Charles Lowe of Valrico counts himself lucky that he's held onto his job at a local fertilizer manufacturer. Lowe, father of eight, had been shopping four hours and took a break at 8:30 a.m. near the Westfield Brandon mall fountain, thankful that his holiday gift bill is shrinking.

"It's gotten cheaper as they've gotten older," Lowe quipped.

Deals

Among the deals locally:

Kid's jackets $14 until noon at the Gymboree store at the Shops at Wiregrass, plus 30 percent off the whole store.

Rigid brand shop vacs for $29 at Lowes, plus 99-cent poinsettias and $59 cordless tool sets.

"Little Dreams" life-sized dolls at Walmart for $9, while they lasted. Charles Lowe of Valrico hoped for a $199 laptop there, and arrived by 4:30 a.m., but missed out.

Even tattoos went on sale at Citrus Park mall.

Lessons

This year, store managers took lessons from last year's stampedes (some fatal), and tried a few tactics to mange eager crowds in a more civilized fashion. Long before dawn, some BestBuy staff took the savvy step of walking the lines of waiting customers and took orders in advance, then filled carts with those items to save customers time.

Stores like Bealls scattered staging areas and waiting lines around the store to disperse potential panic over their deep-discounted lighted palm trees and flamingo-themed ornaments.

Other stores stayed open 24-hours or dispensed will-call tickets to those in line, hoping to quell competition among shoppers.

Numbers

Deal-hunters will likely lead a relatively subdued holiday season, albeit not worse than the abysmal drop in sales last season as the economy truly scared shoppers away from the stores.

Taken together, holiday sales will likely decrease 1 percent to $437.6 billion, according to a forecast by the National Retail Federation, based on indicators like housing data, unemployment rates and the most recent monthly sales data.

And while this one day after Thanksgiving may seem the busiest of the year, it's not by much. Shopping analysts say Saturday and Sunday see just about the same amount of frenzied traffic.