Holiday Shoppers Finding Some Bare Shelves : Merchandising: Retailers are selling out of, among other things, Madonna’s ‘Sex’ book and items from Nintendo.

Looking for “Sex?”

If the photo book by Madonna is on your Christmas shopping list, you may have to settle for something else. Unexpectedly strong sales of that and other items have left many Southern California retailers without the gifts that shoppers want most.

Many bookstores say they have been sold out of Madonna’s book for weeks and don’t expect any more shipments until after the holidays--if then.

And parents searching for that last-minute Nintendo Gameboy or Sega CD video game set may also find that their shopping lists have been zapped. Many major retail chains have sold their entire stocks.

“Batman merchandise is one of our biggest sellers. We’re really low on that right now. . . . Batman was much stronger than I anticipated,” said Nancy Levenson, toy buyer for Toyorama in Westwood.

Electronic video game toys, which seemed to hit a price barrier last year, are on the move again. The hand-held $80 Nintendo Gameboy has been in big demand.

“It’s a function of retailers not anticipating demand. They just got caught short,” said Bill White, a spokesman for Nintendo of America.

In the case of the full-sized $150 Super Nintendo, many retailers are sold out and additional stock is not available, White said.

“We’re not going to have any more of them in this Christmas,” said James Austreng, manager of a Silo electronics store in Santa Ana.

Sega’s CD peripheral for the Genesis system, an item that allows players to run sophisticated video games on their TV sets, has been so popular that its first shipment last month of 200,000 units nationwide was sold in 48 hours.

“We sold out of (the Sega CD) in a couple of days,” said Philip Kamangar, store manager for Audio Video Center in Santa Monica.

Booksellers say two tomes at opposite ends of the morality spectrum--Madonna’s explicit “Sex” photo book and a collection of the thoughts of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh--are hard-to-find top sellers.

“We are one of the few stores in L.A. that still has ‘Sex’ in stock,” said Dan Christiaens, merchandise manager for Brentano’s bookstore in Century City. “People who want that book end up calling us.”

Times correspondents Mary Guthrie and Mimi Ko contributed to this report.