I was talking about this with my wife last night. We mostly by store brand stuff, but there are a few things that don’t taste as good as the Big Name Brand equivalent. We usually shop at Meijer, Farmer Jack, Kroger, and Target.
What products, in your [humble] opinion, really require the genuine name brand?
Let’s collect the high quality store brand stuff and the high quality brand name stuff.
I really like the Longs brand of dry roasted peanuts, so unless anyone disagrees, I’ll put peanuts in the category of good stuff that doesn’t require a brand name.
French’s brand fried onions (those things that go on green bean casserole and salads). The last time I was at WalMart, I bought one of each of the store brand and the French’s. The name brand was superior in both looks and taste (and artwork on the can).
I believe you are mistaken about this. The quality of raisins in general varies considerably. Sometimes you get a package of stale ones, other times they are fresh, but (as far as I can tell) it makes no difference whether they are store brand or not. Furthermore, the raisins, like all store brand merchandise, come from the same place as the other raisins (either Dole or SunMaid). I used to think that store brand made a difference, but now that’s all I buy. Sometimes the inside packaging will reveal where they actually came from (in my case, Sun Maid).
Store brand Chex cereal equivalents are the original, so you might as well buy those. (Chex were originally made by Ralston Purina, who sold the brand name to General Mills in order to concentrate on making “store brand” cereals.)
Their Cinnamon Toast Crunch is awesome, too. As is Aldi’s. Aldi’s Honey Bunches O’ Oats knock off is good, too.
Almost everything on my shopping list is Store Brand Acceptable, but I still check prices, because sometimes the Brand Name will actually be cheaper on sale.
Must be brand-name:
Toilet paper.
Second for Doritos. Also lime flavored tortilla chips.
Ro-tel.
Although as a rule store brand soda is inferior, Safeway storebrand is the exception. They have a huge variety of flavors, and almost everything in diet – Diet Cream soda, Diet Cherry-lemonlime (Cherry 7up), Diet cola with lime. Around $1 per 6pack, you can’t beat it. All the flavors I’ve tried are more than acceptable, and some of the flavors, like Diet Grapefruit, I prefer to the brand-name equivalent (Diet Squirt).
I also like the Safeway oreo knockoffs. They actually have flavors Oreo doesn’t make – Neopolitan (Strawberry and vanilla filing) and Smores (graham cookiem chocolate and vanilla filling).
Must buy namebrand: Mayonnaise. Bring out the Hellman’s and bring out the best!
I normally use some variation of Pert shampoo (it depends on what’s on sale and what I feel like buying.) Last time I bought the cheaper Western Family brand. There were just enough differences in the chemicals used in the cheap brand to give me lots more trouble with my hair. So now I know to spend the couple extra bucks on the name-brand.
Other things that are just fine as store brand:
Jelly/preserves
Ice cream (sometimes, depends on the store)
Milk
Facial tissue (assuming you don’t want/need the lotioned stuff)
It really depends on the store. For instance, I’ve found Albertson’s in general to have pretty good quality store-brand (except for their chicken flavored Rice-a-Roni substitute, that stuff was just nasty), but Kroger I’ll only buy a couple store-brand products, and not many of those are food (mostly paper products or the like).
That’s exactly what I was going to post. I buy the Safeway brand diet Cherry Lemon-Lime soda all the time. The taste is fine, and you can’t beat the price.