The ghosts of Black Fridays past

Black Friday just ain’t what it used to be.

Sure the UK DAILY MAIL picked up on a story from Allentown PA of people fighting in the Lehigh Valley Mall in front of a FOREVER 21 store.. But besides that event, very few other like it made headlines..

Christmas, it would seem, has lost its gusto.. it lost that faint scent of materialism…

The DRUDGE REPORT tonight showcased headlines of empty stores along with this photograph of a lone person exiting a mall:

The rise if e-commerce has suddenly made Black Friday a empty vessel example of the staple of the season it once was.. Black turns red.. Brick and mortar turns into click and router..

Just a few years ago, people had a fear of missing out on a giant sale. Now, with malls shuttered and so many other teetering, people are turning to the NET for their shopping needs.

One survey said that only 36% of Americans planned to do any shopping on Black Friday this year..

Meanwhile, on the local level, it’s a mixed bag.

The Pottsville mall was dead.. local Walmarts were, too..
The Harrisburg East Mall and Colonial Park Mall had lonely feelings..
The Whitehall Mall was a bust..
But the Wilkes Barre mall bustled.. The Lehigh Valley Mall (Where the fight was) had long lines of people waiting to get in!
THE CAPITAL CITY MALL in Harrisburg may have taken the prize for the busiest mall in the East, besides the King of Prussia..

Perhaps the story here is a mixture of changing populations.. changing habits.

Sure, more people shop online.. but from what I saw firsthand today while traveling, some malls were actually thriving. More people=more shoppers. With more malls in the coal regions closed, more people travel an hour or more to shop.

But one little secret I saw today amongst the shoppers (And me): The phone was in the left hand the entire time. People were quickly comparing prices they found in stores with those they were seeing online–this new trend may still equal big sales for certain companies, but it will come at night. After people go home.. After their fill their virtual Amazon cart while ignoring the real version cart in the mall of their choice.

Habits are changing..
Times are changing.

But it sure is fun to go back in time and recall those fun Black Fridays that were… the times when fists flew and emotions were raw. When there was no net. And the only choice you had was to punch out another mom or lose out on the last Tickle Me Elmo in the toy store..

And with that.. a brief stroll through amnesia lane:

The hottest toy of 1996: The Tickle Me Elmo.. The toy was introduced in the summer of 96 without much fanfare.. until the syndicated Rose O’Donnell show was given 200 of them for her audience members. the rest is history.

By the end of 96, a million Tickles were sold.. 5 million by 97.. People fought it out.. Some kids woke up Christmas morning without their dreams and prayers being answered because of inventory lack..

Beanie Babies in 1995 had some bloodshed, as well..

But this is when things also began to suddenly shift.. When stores were out of stock, people turned to new self-selling site eBay.com to buy and sell Beanie Babies at prices 1000 times greater than that offered by stores. At one point, Beanie Babies sales made up 10% of total sales on for eBay.

The 80s were fraught with high drama..

This old 1983 news story features a scene of violence from Wilkes Barre PA as a woman was knocked to the ground in a fight over Cabbage Patch kids–the toy that was all the rage that year because of marketing genius and purposeful scarcity: