• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, November 1, 2010

Hoping to incite a parental stampede for Big Foot, Squinkies, and Sing-A-Ma-Jigs, Walmart has announced what it calls "aggressive plans" to lower toy prices for the holiday -- just two weeks after its last round of toy rollbacks.

And in a first for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer, it says it will unveil a 52-page toy catalog this week, as well as a dedicated "top toy" section on its Web site. Among Walmart's rollbacks on popular items: Shoppers can get Fisher-Price's Big Foot for $88, not $97; a Paper Jamz Guitar for under $20, instead of $24; and Toy Story 3 Talking Woody, Jessie or Blast Off Buzz Lightyear Dolls for just $29, instead of $35.

Meanwhile, Toys R Us began rolling out its 80-page "The Great Big Christmas Book" late last week, with prices on many items just slightly above Walmart's new cuts. The Wayne, N.J.-based chain boasts "hundreds of amazing discounts" and more than $5,600 in savings, which the Wayne, N.J.-based company says is more than any other year, as well as 50 free gifts-with-purchase.

This year, experts say, every nickel in these offers is likely to have a big impact on parents. "The economy is still a little bit in question and Middle America is watching its dollars," Jonathan Samet, publisher of Toy Insider/Toy Book, tells Marketing Daily. "You might not be buying lots of things for yourself, but you still want to put multiple things under the tree for your kids. Finding the best prices is very important to them, and they are doing a lot of comparison shopping."

Toy marketers have encouraged that deal-seeking, he says, by backing off pricier items. "You won't see many $300 dinosaurs this year," he says, with many items at $50 or less, and many well below that. Mattel's Sing-A-Ma-Jigs, for instance -- little plush creatures that sing American classics like "Oh! Susanna" and "Where has my little dog gone" -- were launched at $12, he says, "but they're already down to $7.49 in many stores."

The point of these recent price cuts, he says, is to move Christmas shopping earlier and earlier on consumers' calendars. "They're all competing to get shoppers into the store," he says. And parents are savvy enough to realize that that it's smarter to shop early when prices are good, rather than risk not getting the toys on their darlings' lists. "Retailers are keeping much lower levels of inventories," he says. "Shoppers know the days of waiting until Dec. 21 or so for prices to fall are behind them."

Still, he adds, by cutting prices this early in the game, he expects retailers to keep up the discounting: "We'll see it get even more competitive."