I like Walmart brand Equate items in the pharmacy and personal care sections. I like their Great Value items in the grocery section. Their Mainstays line in the housewares, bedding, etc., section is just crummy, though, if you ask me. The Mainstays items I have purchased so far all seem to be just too cheaply made to withstand daily use. Sam Walton can't be happy about it.
It depends on which Mainstays item it is. I think the Mainstays scented candles and room sprays smell delicious. The Mainstays lamps break easily. I've been through two lamps in one year.
You are indeed right about the candles. Fortunately, in their case, there is nothing much breakable. The sprays I haven't tried. But, have mercy, don't even look at any of the kitchen or bath items. You might as well throw your money out the window while driving by.
I agree some of the store brand housewares are not of good quality. I purchased a lamp that was not worth the money I paid for it. I do really like the Walmart brand of bodywash, it smells good and moisturizes as well as the higher price products.
I bought a set of Mainstays kitchen canisters once and the latches on all 3 of them broke within a year.
We just got a new Walmart built and opened up near where I live, and while they do have a good selection of most things; it seems like the older, smaller store had just about as much, except for the new large grocery section, of course. I am still not very happy with them though. The other Super Walmart across town has the refills for Sodastream canisters, and once they built the new Super Walmart to replace the old one here; I assumed that they would carry about the same selection as the other large one does. However, they do not have the Sodastream canisters, and they have no idea when (or if) they will ever have them at this store. You would think that the stores in the area would stock the same items.
I am not keen on supermarket homewares myself. Own brand pharmacy items are always great and won brand groceries can be just as good as the more well known ones but the things like towels and kitchen equipment always seem to be of terrible quality.
I agree with you on the equate and the good value products, because they're basically exactly like the name brand versions of whatever they are. I haven't really tried a lot of their Mainstays products that they sell, but now with all of the bad things you guys have to say about them I'll try to stay clear from them from now on. I've gotten like the cheap plastic cooking utensils for when I'm cooking at school from that line, and they work for the purpose I need them for (basically just cooking pasta to be honest), but they aren't the best quality.
Another Walmart line that I've bought is the Your Zone products ,which is the teen and college dorm bedding and rugs. Those are pretty decent quality and actually cute.
For some reason this made me think of the Gordon Ramsay line of cooking appliances I saw at K-mart about a year or two ago - I was totally shocked at how cheap and flimsy they all were. I'm assuming he didn't really have any oversight in the design of those, they looked worse than the cheapest of the cheap stuff you would find at a dollar store. I'm familiar with the Mainstay's logo on some of their products, but I don't recall buying many of them. However we did recently purchase some Mainstay's brand cereal bowls to replace several Corningware bowls that had broken. The Mainstays bowls were only about 88 cents each and look almost identical to our remaining Corningware ones which I believe were like $5 a piece or so. Also when it comes to items like kitchen towels, I don't mind buying a cheaper brand like Mainstays because no matter how nice the towel is, i'm still gonna wind up replacing it once it gets stained too much.
