Last month it was the books, taking food out of Sarah Palin’s children’s mouths and crushing my hopes to ever become obscenely rich and obnoxious as the author of best-selling thrillers that Hollywood directors would fight over to option.

But now they’re slamming each other over the feckin’ Easy Bake Oven?

In what is emerging as one of the main story lines of the 2009 post-recession shopping season, the two heavyweight retailers are waging an online price war that is spreading through product areas like books, movies, toys and electronics.

The tussle began last month as a relatively trivial but highly public back-and-forth over which company had the lowest prices on the most anticipated new books and DVDs this fall. By last week, it had spread to select video game consoles, mobile phones, even to the humble Easy-Bake Oven, a 45-year-old toy from Hasbro that usually heats up small cakes, not tensions between billion-dollar corporations.

Last Wednesday, Wal-Mart dropped the price of the oven to $17, from $28, as part of its “Black Friday” deals. Later the same day, Amazon cut its price, which had also been $28, to $18.

“It’s not about the prices of books and movies anymore; there is a bigger battle being fought,” said Fiona Dias, executive vice president at GSI Commerce, which manages the Web sites of large retailers. “The price sniping by Wal-Mart is part of a greater strategic plan. They are just not going to cede their business to Amazon.”

Well. I guess world domination counts as a plan.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 1836 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Black Friday, Non-Groceries, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.