Brad

Time for the first contest of the year and it's one of the classics! To be entered, reply to this thread with a Black Friday or holiday shopping themed haiku. For those unfamiliar, a haiku is a 3-line poem with the first, second and third lines having 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. It does not have to rhyme, but should create some kind of imagery in the reader's head, so be creative! An example Black Friday haiku would be: people skipping lines (5 syllables) crashing carts into others (7 syllables) glad i stay at home (5 syllables) You can include more than one haiku in your post but it will not increase your odds. Also please do not post multiple times in the thread - keep all your haikus in one post. Also don't just re-use your (or someone else's) haiku from past years - come up with new ones! Contest will be open until 11pm ET on Thursday, October 6th. I will then randomly choose 5 members who entered and you'll win a brand new limited edition GottaDEAL hoodie! Limit of one hoodie prize per member but if you win you are still welcome to enter future contests for fun. For more info on this year's new hoodies and to order them, see this thread. Good luck to everyone!

UPDATE: The deadline for ordering shirts has passed.

giz mgreen MsKate smurfgirl stacya I'm still waiting for you 5 to reply to me PM with your address, so if you see this post, check your PMs

Press release: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/introducing-amazons-prime-early-access-sale-new-holiday-shopping

Press release: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2022/09/22/walmart-doubles-down-on-convenience-value-and-experience-to-serve-customers-this-holiday-season

Just hoodies this year. Info coming in the next week or two. Next year is the site's 20th year so there will be more kinds of merch for that milestone

Press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2022/09/Target-Kicks-Off-the-Holiday-Season-Early-With-Mor Their holiday price matching will also start on the 6th.

Press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2022/09/Target-Announces-Exclusive-Multiyear-Agreement-wit Shop the toys: https://www.target.com/c/top-toys/-/N-5cgh5 FAO Schwarz toys: https://www.target.com/c/fao-schwarz/-/N-rqke7

DISCUSS BLACK FRIDAY & WIN AN APPLE IPAD AIR! Here's how it works: Through Monday, December 5th (at 11:59:59pm EST), you'll earn one entry into the contest every time you post in one of the Black Friday-related forums including this main Black Friday Discussion subforum and the Sale & Ad Discussion subforum. As usual we're not going to require your posts to be a certain length to qualify or anything like that - we just want a lot of great discussion. We know there are times when a one-word reply is fine. All posts in nearly all threads in these forums will count, including other contest threads. Posts in the GD Prize Club threads will not count however. Be aware that it's pretty obvious if someone is attempting to "game the system" by posting repeatedly to get more entries. If that happens, we will give you ONE warning via PM. If we see the behavior continuing, you will be disqualified from winning a prize. This includes posting multiple times in a row in a single thread when one post would be enough, replying to many threads with nothing but "thanks!", etc. It'll be obvious if anyone does this, so don't do it. There is plenty to discuss without having to cheat to earn additional entries. So create interesting threads, reply to other members' questions, give your opinions on everything that is being discussed. This is a discussion board - let's have some interesting discussion here! On Tuesday, December 6th we will randomly select one lucky winner from all eligible entries and you will win a brand new Apple iPad Air 64GB WiFi Tablet. Prize must be claimed by replying to the winner notification PM here on the forum by January 31, 2023 or prize will be forfeited. And as a benefit to those who were here early this year, all the posts in the forums up until now aside from the prize club thread(s) will also count towards this contest. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to answer them. Disclaimer: this contest is not sponsored by or affiliated in any way with Apple.

I sent out PMs to the 41 of you still in the club (according to the script - If you think I've missed you send me a PM and I'll investigate). Please reply to the PM with your name and mailing address so I can get your prizes ready to ship next month (or maybe sooner...)

For those who are unaware we have a GottaDEAL server on Discord for everyone to chat about Black Friday, deals or whatever else comes up. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/3hd2K5t If you're unfamiliar with Discord, it is a free text and voice chat service. You can access it via their dedicated apps for phones or tablets, or through a traditional web browser. Once you sign up for an account you can join the GD server using the special invite link above and can chat with everyone else who has signed up. One advantage of using Discord over the old forum chat function is that you can view past conversation in the channels and not just what is happening while you are there so can come and go as frequently as you want without missing anything. Currently there are #general and #tech channels for more off-topic chat and the main #blackfriday channel for discussing Black Friday. There's also a #contest channel that we'll use for some giveaways over the next few months and a #deals channel where we'll be posting some of the hottest deals, in-stock alerts for hot items, preorder opportunities and more. We have well over 1,000 members so far and we're hoping to do even more with it this year, so sign up if you haven't and we'll see you there!

With today being the unofficial last day of summer I've opened the various subforums here to unofficially start our coverage of the Black Friday "season" I don't know if we're going to be back to the "one major sale" format or if the bigger stores will continue to spread things out over the whole month of November, so we're going to keep things the same as last year with the "Sale & Ad Discussion" forum having threads not only for the BF ads but also for many of the additional sales and catalogs that get posted on the Black Friday site, whether they take place on Black Friday or not.

Here are plain text lists of the items in the ads (at least the ones in our database) dating back to 2003: 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020 - 2021 And as always you can also browse over 1,200 historical Black Friday ads going back to 2004 at: https://www.blackfridayarchive.com There is also this page which has dates ads were posted up until 2020: https://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Dates I probably won't be updating that page anymore because of so many sales being split up into multiple weeks, but you can always check when a particular sale was posted during any year by finding the thread for it in the forum archives.

Press release:https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2022/08/30/walmarts-2022-top-toy-list-is-here-with-the-hottest-toys-this-holiday-season View toys: https://www.walmart.com/shop/col/top-toys

Anything in particular that you'll be keeping an eye on as the sales and deals start ramping up in a month or two?

Down to double digits. 99 days until Black Friday

Press release: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/save-date-july-12-13-prime-day-returns-offering-amazons-lowest-0 Earn a $10 Credit Through Prime Stampcard: From June 16 through Prime Day, members are invited to explore the perks of membership to receive a $10 credit toward their Prime Day order or future Amazon purchase. To participate, members collect a stamp for completing each of four Prime activities: stream Prime Video, listen to Prime Music, borrow a Prime Reading or Kindle Unlimited book or add one to their library, and make a Prime-shipping eligible purchase. Members can visit https://amazon.com/cer/stampcard/hometo learn more.

Happy "Halfway to Black Friday" Day

Next week marks the halfway point. Crazy how fast those 6 months went (yes, I say that every year lol)

Down to 42 members after 2 dropped out in April.

Lost 3 prize club members in March. Down to 44.

Lost 2 members in February. Down to 47

FYI if you want to lock in the current $119 Prime price you can buy their "gift of Prime" gift cards. Then let your current Prime membership expire and apply one of those gift cards to get another year. You can do this for as many years as you'd like by buying multiple gift cards. But if you are like me and grandfathered into the old Prime family plan which lets you share your membership with 4 other people/households, you don't want to do this as you'll lose your old plan if you let your current Prime membership expire. Having that grandfathered plan means I'm pretty much locked in even with price increases. With 5 different households on the plan, the cost for each of us is much less. Prize club down to 49 members after January.

A few days left and there are 10 of you in danger of dropping out of the club this month...

Previous Thread: https://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/334790-amazon-toy-clearance-deal-thread-2021-edition/ Amazon Toy Clearance Deal Posting Thread As we pass the end of the holiday season, it's time for GottaDEAL members to start shopping for great toy clearance deals on Amazon! 1) Please only post toy deals that qualify for free Super Saver Shipping or Amazon Prime shipping. 2) Deals that are part of their Lightning Deals are not clearance deals. Those belong in their own thread. 3) You are able to post more than 1 toy in each post, you can separate the deals if you'd like in your post 4) When posting a toy deal find, please remember to post the following: The toy name, the price (including the original price along with the sale price is preferred) and most importantly, a link to the toy on Amazon. So let's get to posting Amazon toy finds! If you have questions on how to post the deals, please feel free to send me a PM or post your question over in the Discuss GottaDEAL sub-forum.