And many of them don't even have a real click action, that I can find. I can't even right-click and manually pick "open in new tab", because the browser doesn't recognize what I'm clicking on as a link.

I agree, ecommerce sites are the place that I most often want to open several items in tabs and decide between them, and the place this function is most often blocked! I wish I could scream at the jerk who implemented this, but that jerk is not among the options of screamable people.