Kevin Cowherd Originally published Nov 25, 2002

SOMEDAY WE'LL BE telling the grandkids about the great Turkey Wars of Thanksgiving '02, when the price of a bird dropped quicker than tech stock, and the supermarkets were practically giving the stuff away.

Don't believe me? Check out the newspaper ads, friend. It's like the retail version of the Bloods vs. the Crips. Except every other day another store seems to jump into the rumble.

Safeway announces a sale price of 39 cents a pound for frozen turkeys, which matches SuperFresh. Giant drops its price to 33, which is quickly matched by SuperFresh. Then last week Giant drops its price to 19 cents a pound with a full-page ad that screams: "LIKE WE SAID ... WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!"

Well. Not to be outdone, SuperFresh jumps into the fray with its own full-page ad the next day crowing that it, too, will offer turkey at 19 cents a pound and "WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!"

And the day after that Safeway and Food Lion come out with their own full-page ads matching the 19 cents price.

Oh, they're wonderful, these Turkey Wars, at least if you like turkey.

And the price could go even lower. Pretty soon these supermarkets might just give you the turkey if you buy a can of cranberry sauce or a package of dinner rolls.

Still, if we're having a price war, I wish it was over something I could get really excited about.

Like, say, gasoline.

It would be great to pick up the paper one day and see an ad that blares: "BIG EARL AT YORK ROAD SHELL SAYS, 'WE'RE SLASHING PRICES! REGULAR UNLEADED NOW 1.25!'"

And imagine this being followed by an ad the next day saying: "VINNY AT YORK ROAD EXXON TAKES A BACK SEAT TO NO ONE IN CUSTOMER SATISFACTION! REGULAR UNLEADED NOW $1.20!"

And from there a full-blown price war breaks out, until the price of a gallon of unleaded plummets to, well, the current price of turkey.

Now that would be something to get fired up about. (Speaking of which, when was the last time gas was 19 cents a gallon? The Truman administration?)

But since a gas price war is highly unlikely, given the current sunny disposition of the heads of the OPEC nations, we'll have to be content with the Turkey Wars.

As I write this, the price of turkey is holding at 19 cents a pound, which is the lowest price in recent memory.

This means you can now get a 20-pound turkey for ... hold on a sec, doing the math ... $3.80!

And you can pick up a 10-pound turkey for around the price of a Big Mac.

Still, with a couple of days left before Thanksgiving, we may yet experience some volatility in the market, so to speak.

The folks at Giant, in particular, bear watching, since it was their 14-cent price-slash that proved to be the proverbial brick through the window in these Turkey Wars.

Barry Scher, Giant's vice president of public affairs, sounded like he was itching for one of the other chains to cut turkey prices again when I reached him on the phone the other day.

"This is a very competitive industry, and during the holiday season, turkey is in every shopper's mind," he said.

"We will not be undersold," he added ominously. (Well, as ominously as you can sound when you're discussing turkeys. "The proof is in the pudding."

Scher said that the response among Giant customers to the 19-cent-per-pound price has been "phenomenal."

Oh, yeah? I said. Like how phenomenal? Give me some sales figures.

"We don't give out numbers," he said.

Yeah, big surprise there. Nobody in retail gives out numbers anymore.

You have a better chance of finding out how many missiles we have pointed at Iraq than of finding out how many turkeys a supermarket chain sells.

When I asked Scher if he thought there was any chance Giant would lower its turkey price even further, he clammed up again.

"It's a competitive thing," he said. "We wouldn't talk about that."

I'm no economist. But it seems to me that if the price of turkey drops any further, it could spark panic-selling on the international turkey market.

Then pretty soon you'd have a turkey glut, to the point where people would be giving them away at busy intersections and using them as doorstops or for banging tent pegs into the ground.

But maybe that's getting ahead of things.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2002