Retailers across the country are lining up with special offers for Black Friday, hoping skittish consumers will forget the country's economic troubles and rescue stores from plummeting sales.

National retailers are expected to offer discounts on everything from TVs and DVD players to the latest Hannah Montana novelty for the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Those retailers, however, are often tight-lipped about the deals, and details about discounts at many stores have been scant. Toys ‘R' Us announced its Black Friday deals last week, which include up to 60 percent off Disney's High School Musical 2 figures and up to 50 percent off Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock bundles for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 or Microsoft Xbox 360.

While the national chains typically claim the spotlight with unusually long lines and deals unavailable other times of the year, some local shops will also have their own offers.

Rio Grande Valley Premium Outlets in Mercedes plans to open its doors at midnight Thursday, with a wealth of retailers offering from 25 to 65 percent off designer goods.

At La Plaza Mall in McAllen, a handful of shops also plan to open at midnight, including KB Toys, Radio Shack and GameStop. Energy drinks, shopping bags and mugs will be given to the first 100 shoppers through the doors for the official 5 a.m. opening, said Isabel Rodriguez, director of mall marketing.

"We always look forward to the holidays," Rodriguez said. "It's obviously a very important season to us. ... I can't comment on sales."

The day after Thanksgiving is dubbed Black Friday by retailers and the media because it's traditionally the day when retailers go in the black, or start making a profit, as compared to being in the red, or losing money.

U.S. retail sales had the largest one-month decline on record in October, and in the Rio Grande Valley sales have been falling for months. Mexican shoppers, who annually spend millions of dollars in the region, are now crossing the border less and U.S. shoppers have reined in spending as the world's economy tumbled.

All this has many local retailers hoping Christmas will entice shoppers back to their stores.

At Nowhere, a men's clothing boutique at 4500 N. 10th St. in McAllen, some items will be discounted 60 percent for Black Friday, said co-owner Jessica Villarreal. In October, her sales fell as much as 30 percent, she said.

Villarreal plans to sell some of the leftover inventory for less than $30 per item at a Dec. 21 clearance sale on the patio of Roosevelt's At 7, a downtown McAllen bar that she co-owns. Villarreal is organizing the event, at which her competitors are also expected to empty out their own inventory.

"Right now is not the time to be ugly with (other retailers)," she said. "We should all work together and promote each other."

Melissa Cavazos, 21 and her boyfriend, Juan Vega, 20, have already begun their Christmas shopping. While browsing the outlet shops in Mercedes recently, the pair said they plan to spend about the same as last year, but in a different way.

"Were buying a little at a time, versus all at once," Cavazos said. That way, she added, the pocketbook hit is spaced out over several paychecks.

Many other consumers have not started their Christmas shopping yet, but turnout on Black Friday is expected to be higher this year than last, according to a study by Consumer Reports.

Nearly 26 percent of people surveyed planned to shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving, compared to 21 percent the year before, the magazine reported. And some 85 percent of shoppers surveyed expected to buy big-ticket, expensive electronics - all good signs for the nation's struggling retailers.

Still, some experts have predicted this will be the worst Christmas shopping season in years.

For Jose Garcia, who has already closed one of his cell phone stands in San Juan this year, the economic woes aren't that troubling. Between bargaining with customers at a stand in a Donna flea market last week, he said that while his sales have fallen dramatically, he has to stay positive and hope they will turn around.

"If you stay home weeping, you're going to go out of business," he said.

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Sean Gaffney covers business, the economy and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434.