It was flat-screen televisions, not PlayStation 3s, that were selling fast this morning at Wal-Mart SuperCenter.

And that’s partly because the just-released game console sold out Nov. 17 and has not been restocked, store manager Bobby Shumpert said.

&#8220We have no PlayStation 3s right now,” he said. &#8220But all the TVs are a good price. The $68 TV and 42-inch TV have all done real well.”

Odia Winston agreed the televisions were a bargain. She arrived at Wal-Mart at 4:45 and joined others who headed out in 35-degree weather to scoop up TVs and other Christmas gifts.

&#8220I think it probably will be the hot item this year,” she said. &#8220It’s a reasonable price, and the DVD players have sold out. Dora dolls are also hot this year.”

Shumpert agreed, saying Dora toys were selling fast.

&#8220It’s pretty much anything related to Dora the Explorer,” he said. &#8220The Dora laptop has done extremely well for us, too.”

Sherri Moffett arrived at the store about the same time as Winston. With her 17-month-old daughter, she also picked up a television and some toys for her four girls.

&#8220I won’t be here much longer,” she said just before 6. &#8220I have three other girls at home.”

Moffett said she hits the stores early every Black Friday, so named because it is traditionally when a surge of shopping makes stores profitable for the year.

Across town at Vicksburg Factory Outlets, Haggar’s was the only store to open early, at 6.

&#8220We had some good early-bird specials, and we had people waiting in line,” marketing director Liz Porter said. &#8220Then, we had about six or seven stores open at 7. By 7:30, they were packed. The stores that opened early were very happy.”

By 8, though, shopping had slowed at both locations. But Shumpert and Porter said they expected traffic to increase again before noon.

In a slowing but still steady economy, retailers nationwide heightened their pitch to shoppers with expanded hours, generous discounts and free money in the form of gift cards.

At a Wal-Mart store in Cincinnati, Gary Miller, a 45-year-old computer programmer, was on the hunt for a 20-inch LCD television he had seen advertised online.

&#8220My wife sent me out for this one,” he said, pointing to the television in his shopping cart. &#8220But then I saw this one (a 20-inch conventional TV) for $85 and said, what the heck, I’ll get that one, too.”

While Black Friday officially starts holiday shopping, it’s generally no longer the busiest day of the season – that honor now falls to the last Saturday before Christmas. But stores see Black Friday as setting an important tone to the overall season: What consumers see that day influences where they will shop for the rest of the season.

Last year, total Black Friday sales dipped 0.9 percent to $8 billion from the year before, dampened by deep discounting, according to Shopper Trak RCT Corp., which tracks total sales at more than 45,000 mall-based retail outlets. For the Thanksgiving weekend, total sales rose just 0.4 percent to $16.8 billion.