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Updated: Nov. 27, 2009 11:10 a.m.

Black Friday beckoned Friday morning as shoppers shopped up for deals, doorbusters and sales too good to pass up.

On W. Blue Mound Road in Brookfield, about 200 people queued outside the K-Mart in 29-degree temperatures waiting for the 6 a.m. opening.

By 6:15 a.m., one of the advertised items – a 32-inch Sony Bravia flat-screen TV selling for $379.99 – was sold out. There were five visible near the service counter.

At the same time, just to the west, the Best Buy electronics store was full and people were streaming into the store.

At Brookfield Square, the checkout line at the Old Navy store wound all across the store by 5 a.m., after a 3 a.m. opening with offers of doorbusters.

Just before midnight at Brookfield’s Toys R Us store, police were called to keep frustrated shoppers under control. According to Sgt. Joe Mozina, shoppers formed two lines to get into the store. But then a third line began to form, which resulted in some people getting ahead in line, he said.

Police were called, but no arrests were made.

Milwaukee police were called to the Toys R Us store at 3900 S. 27th St., at midnight to manage the crowd because so many people showed up to shop. No arrests were made.

At Mayfair in Wauwatosa, a traffic jam, with horns blaring and drivers cutting in line, occurred at the south end ofthe lot, just before 6 a.m. The mall at been offering $15 vouchers to the first 300 drivers who parked on the upper levels of the ramp.

Shoppers had plenty of room to move at Bayshore Town Center Friday morning. At 9 a.m. nearly 500 spots were still open in the N. Port Washington Road parking structure, and the Apple store, while busy, had nowhere near the traffic it sees on many ordinary weekend evenings.

“The state of the economy is one of…there isn’t necessarily confidence,” shopper Bob Boucher said. “For the most part, people can still afford to go to the grocery store and go out to restaurants, but they don’t necessarily feel an exuberance (about) spending.”

Boucher, 59, of River Hills, owns a real estate firm, Abundant Development Corp. Business has been flat, he said. Still, he wasn’t just shopping Friday but buying – an array of new computer equipment on which Apple was offering modest Black Friday discounts of around 10%. It was in part a Christmas present to himself and his family, Boucher said, but also an investment he believes will help sharpen his computer skills for years to come.

And Boucher didn’t read too much into the relatively modest crowd playing with the Macs and iPhones.

“I think this is going to get a lot busier this afternoon,” he said. “A lot of the kids who come here are college students. They’re still asleep.”

Hours before the doors opened at 6 a.m. at the Best Buy store in Fox Point, some 350 shoppers congregated in the overnight chill.

The premier Door Busters were gone even before the doors opened. Store clerks, eager to avoid having shoppers claw each other for coveted bargains, handed out certificates for “door busters” to the throng outside.

By the time the store opened, the premium items already were sold – shoppers only needed to present the ticket, pay, and pick up their goods. And the crowd was peaceful as well, said store clerk Pete Hirsch.

One of the most popular Door Busters was a Sony laptop for $399.99, Hirsch said. Big-screen televisions and video games also were in demand, Hirsch said.

At the Outlet Shoppes at Oshkosh, at about 6:30 a.m., the parking lot was half full. There are 39 shops in the shopping area.

Gina Slechta, vice president of marketing for the Outlet Shoppes, said the first set of shoppers showed up at 9:30 p.m. Some stores opened before midnight.

She said, “We’ve had fairly good success in this tough economy. We’ve lost a couple of stores, but those were part of the chains that closed nationwide.” She said it was not the result of the Oshkosh market.

Slechta, who is based in Omaha, Neb., said the Oshkosh market has held quite strong, compared with the rest of the country.

“Oshkosh is not seeing huge dips in its economy like California and some other places,” she said Friday morning.

Slechta said her firm tracked zip codes of shoppers. One of the things that impressed her is that shoppers came from as far as 70 miles away.

In tough economies, she said shoppers tend to gravitate toward outlet stores. Outlets are a little different than the rest of retail,” she said. “Our sales have actually increased in this tough economy.

Journal Sentinel reporters Paul Gores, Rick Romell, John Schmid, Doris Hajewski, Sharif Durhams and Rick Barrett contributed to this report.