Black Friday can officially be called "Black and Blue Friday" as Americans across the fruited plain have been stampeding and, in some cases, fighting each other in the rush for seasonal bargains.

Josephine Hoffman, 73, falls to floor amid mad rush at Sawgrass Mills Mall in Broward County, Fla. (courtesy South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

"I was trying to get out of the way, but they knocked me down," Josephine Hoffman, 73, of Coconut Creek, Fla., told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, recounting how she got caught up in a human wave rushing into a Brandsmart store at the Sawgrass Mills Mall in Broward County.

"I hit my head on the floor, and people stepped on me," she said. "I don't understand why people do these things."

Retailers including Wal-Mart have been offering super-low prices on popular electronics, but some consumers had to wait in line for hours only to be told the discounted items were no longer available.

Wal-Mart advertised laptops for $398 in the newspaper ads," Jorge Santana of Murfreesboro, Tenn., told WorldNetDaily. "My wife and I of course were there at 4:15 a.m. and were told that they were sold out! They only had 17 laptops for thousands of people lured by the ad."

Santana said it was a bait-and-switch tactic, and some retail analysts agree.

"All of this is designed to get people into the store," George Whalin, chief executive of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif, told CNN/Money. "But if they don't see what they want, they get upset. It's an age-old dilemma."

He didn't think too many customers would be alienated, though.

"They'll get over it and they'll buy something else," he said. "In the long run, I really don't see any backlash to this."

Scuffle breaks out at Wal-Mart in Orlando, Fla. (courtesy WFTV-TV)

CNN showed video from Orlando affiliate WFTV of shoppers scuffling at a Wal-Mart store in central Florida.

The station says one man cut in line to get laptop computers on sale.

(Video of the scuffle is available here.)

Another eyewitness said laptops were being thrown "20 feet in the air and people were collapsing on each other to grab them. It was ridiculous."

Black Friday, the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season is reported to be the second-busiest shopping day of the year, after the Saturday before Christmas.

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