San Francisco - With the US in a severe economic recession the relative value offered by high tech toys is proving popular with US holiday shoppers, according to data released Monday.

Preliminary estimates for retail sales on the day after Thanksgiving, which is considered the first day of the holiday shopping season, were up 3 per cent from the same day in 2007 to 10.6 billion dollars.

According to data collected by Pricegrabber.com, an online shopping comparison site, the most popular item was Nintendo's Wii gaming console, followed by the Ugg Australia "classic short" boot, which was the only non-tech item in the firm's list of most popular items.

Nintendo's Wii Fit, a physical fitness game, was third, with several LCD and plasma televisions, an Acer laptop, and two Canon camera models also in the top 10.

Online auction site eBay also saw strong demand for the Wii. It said that it sold 3,171 Wii consoles in the 24 hours following Thanksgiving as well as more than 1,000 Wii Fit packages.

Data from web-shopping company nearbynow.com, which scours local stores for products wanted by its customers, also reflected the keen demand for tech gadgets, though it also reported strong demand for kitchenware, casual clothing and sports gear.

Analysts also saw strong demand for Apple products, especially Mac computers, with many stores seeing sales of more than 13 per hour. However sales of the company's hit iPhone did not see much of an uptick compared to normal sales volume, according to analyst Gene Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffray.