People usually don’t save their Black Friday circulars from year to year, because that would be really weird. Here’s the thing, though: the deals on the shopping holiday aren’t that great to begin with, and they also repeat from year to year.

Flipping through old circulars dating back to 2008, the Wall Street Journal noticed that the items and even the prices don’t change very much from year to year on the front covers of print and digital Black Friday circulars.

A Target spokesperson pointed out the obvious thing: the items appear year after year because people want to buy them year after year. “Our Black Friday ads are intended to showcase the products our guests want,” he told the paper, and the items that they want during the holiday season are toys and small appliances.

That’s why 80% of the items on the front covers of circulars are the same from year to year. Sure, there’s the occasional fad like netbooks or hoverboards, but most of the same items appear at the same prices for years in a row.

This isn’t news to Consumerist readers: heck, even “Black Friday in July” deals tend to repeat from year to year at stores like Target. Retailers run the risk of driving some dedicated deal-hunters away with repetition, but maybe they’re just depending on our poor collective memory to make the deals look good.

Black Friday’s Inside Secret: Same Deals Every Year [Wall Street Journal]

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