What pepper spray? Black Friday sales break records

It can be tough to tell how successful a Black Friday is. If you’re out jostling with infected-zombie-like soccer moms at 3am, it probably seems like everyone is dropping their dough; but if you lay low and spend the day in a cranberry sauce coma, it’s also tough to tell how big a day it is for retailers. Well, wonder no more, because the numbers are in, and 2011 was a monster. A new IBM Benchmark study says online shopping on Black Friday was up a whopping 24.3% over 2010, while Thanksgiving sales were even better, besting last year’s totals by 39.3%. And it’s no shocker to see that electronics led the way.
Amazon says the Kindle Fire quadrupled its sales over the weekend, while Nintendo set new records on the strength of Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii. Microsoft also reports it sold more Xbox 360s last week than in any other week in the console’s six year history, with an amazing 800,000 black boxes moving in just one 24-hour window.  750,000 Kinect sensors also were sold, so we can expect even more crappy dancing in living rooms across the country. Better keep the pepper spray handy.