The real feeding frenzy Thursday wasn’t at the Thanksgiving table — it was at the cash register.
Not satisfied with waiting for Black Friday deals, holiday shoppers put down their turkey drumsticks and rushed to Big Apple stores to gobble up amazing Thanksgiving Day discounts.
Even as some consumers were getting their credit cards ready for marathon swiping sessions on Black Friday, plenty of shoppers couldn’t wait.
The line to get inside Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square wrapped around the block Thursday, with shoppers like Sabrina Henry, 28, looking to grab a Barbie doll house and other toys for her daughter.
“Everything I want is on sale, so it’s worth it,” said Henry, who still had to finish her Turkey Day cooking after shopping.
“I have it prepared but I haven’t finished cooking yet. We are gonna have a late Thanksgiving dinner.”
Fellow Toys ‘R’ Us shopper Jeffrey Setiawan said he didn’t mind balancing family time and shopping time.
“After I’m done here, I will go home and have dinner. I promised my kids I would get this,” said Setiawan, 31, who needed a LeapPad 2 tablet — on sale for $39.99 — for his kids.
“It’s worth standing in the cold for my kids. I’m very cold, so I’m moving back and forth to keep warm.”
Cops had to set up metal barricades to organize shoppers at the Atlantic Terminal Mall in Brooklyn.
Even in the cold weather and fighting crowds, Brooklyn resident Joe Henderson said he didn’t mind spending a chunk of his Thanksgiving at a Target store.
“There’s one Black Friday a year — even if it starts a little early,” said Henderson, a 29-year-old paralegal. “You got to be out here for the deals.”
Local retailers pushed hard to turn Thanksgiving green with Christmas dollars, opening their stores on Turkey Day and ringing up a few extra purchases. That’s largely because the holiday shopping season is almost a week shorter than it was last year, when Thanksgiving fell on Nov. 22.
Best Buy and Macy’s were among the big-name stores that made aggressive plays for pre-Black Friday sales on Thursday.
The electronics giant opened its doors at 12:01 a.m. last Black Friday, but moved up its doorbuster sale to 6 p.m. on Thursday.
“It’s better [to open the stores] at midnight. I’d rather be home,” said Farooq Umar, 24, who nonetheless felt compelled to line up early for any deal he could score at Best Buy on 44th Street in Midtown.“We have been saving money especially for this day, so it’s good for us.”
Another Best Buy customer, 16-year-old Daniel Gallego from Bayside, also bemoaned Thanksgiving Dav shopping — but not enough to turn down a $200 discount on a Samsung smartphone.
“I’ll save $200 at the cost of being hospitalized!” said Gallego, outside Best Buy.
“It would have been nice to do it on Black Friday. I’m starving and can’t wait to be home and eating some turkey.”
Shoppers like 29-year-old Bronx secretary Kayla Boykin said Thanksgiving is just like any other day off — so she didn’t mind spending a part of the holiday waiting to get inside a Kohl’s on Route 4 in Paramus, NJ.
“I don’t get much time off so I am thrilled to get a chance to go to Kohl’s when it hopefully won’t be so crowded,” she said.
Analysts are predicting a moderate shopping season.
The National Retail Federation expects sales to be up 3.9 percent to $602.1 billion during the last two months of 2013.
That would be higher than last year’s 3.5 percent growth — but still short of the robust 6 percent increases that were common before the recession of 2008.
More and more retailers — feeling the pressure to cash in big on Black Friday — are OK with rolling the dice on Thanksgiving Day sales.
“Each retailer is trying to get a larger share of each family’s Christmas gift budget,” said Michelle Weinberger, a professor of marketing communications at Northwestern University.
“They hope that opening earlier with special sales will entice consumers to spend.”
And in the process, that once-bright line between Thanksgiving and Black Friday has nearly been erased.
“The [department store] sales are coming with the turkey,” said Brooklyn College sociology professor Sharon Zukin, author of “Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture.”
“I don’t think this [more Thanksgiving Day shopping] is a good thing if it’s going to stress out more people.”
No matter how early stores open on Thanksgiving week, the nation’s overall retail bottom line might not be any better by Jan. 1.
“The ones that are opening earlier are going to get more sales, but in the end, I don’t think the overall pie gets any bigger,” said Brian Yarbrough, a retail analyst with Edward Jones.
“It’s just a share gain.”
With Post Wire Services and additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan and David K. Li