I would imagine that happy feet 08 tags on pallets was to key minimum wage employees that the stock in the back room was for the holiday season and not to put it out until then so that they would not be caught in a lie in advertising when saying so many available. From a retailers perspective if they don't have happy feet this season they may not be here that next.

For me it is a family bonding experience. See after dinner we all get together and look at the sale papers and decide where we are going to go. Mostly it is Walmart because they price match also so we dont have to go to multiple stores to get the deals. We all subscribe to Black friday websites so that we can see ahead of time where we are going and if it is worth it. Then we 1 week ahead of time, go to other retailers site or online to get an idea of the normal retail price. If the price is not more than 50% off we skip it. We check to make sure they are truly loss leaders and not an "upprice then discount" to be messed up and sad about it later.

Laugh or criticize all you want but we as a family saved almost $4,000 and personally I saved $900 by getting up a little earlier and fighting the crowds and as a family we have been doing it for the last 6 years. We also do the same for cyber Monday. This year we noticed that alot of retailers have less deals then last year or the same deals as last year.


Its about saving money but it is more like a family scavenger hunt. (There are 8 to 10 of us....)

PS we NEVER wait in line actually, that may cost us deals at other stores so whatever is at one store we can find a place that is selling a similar product without a long cold line outside. The key is to research.

[edit on 28-11-2008 by Cairowoman]

Plain and simple, it was probably labeled with "Happy Feet 08" so that the minimum wage employee that is tasked with placing said items on the sales floor does so by putting merchandise in the correct location.

Although, for the life of me, I can not remember one instance in my years of retail where the items were not labeled as to what they were- i.e a Hewlett Packard display, or Sony Digital cameras. "code" was never used.

Odd...

I have a sale on Ice Water, 50% off bring your own glass and save 75%.

sales are gimics... no profit equals - not for sale...