[chc]

IIRC, 100en stores are a lot more legit than their American counterparts. Same thing with convenience stores. In America, even the poor are reluctant to visit dollar stores because the wares are so sketchy. But all my Japanese friends were avid devotees of the 100en store and combini.

[joshu]

There is a Japanese dollar store here in mountain view called Daiso and it is great.

[rdouble]

Ichiban-Kan in SF is pretty good, too.

[georgieporgie]

What do you mean legit? I've been to the Dollar Tree a few times, and it all seems perfectly acceptable, for a dollar. You're not going to get quality cookware, for example, but it seems fine for tons of other stuff.

[chc]

There are a few items that are so hard to mess up (e.g. toilet paper — it's just a long roll of paper!) that they are indeed perfectly fine at the dollar store. But all the food and a lot of the other items are really awful, and it makes people wary of relying on the stores for anything.

I don't know, maybe this is a regional thing and it's only been that way in places I've lived while other places have awesome dollar stores. But I've had friends who lived in places only marginally better than slums who still would only very reluctantly shop at dollar stores because they didn't trust that the candles wouldn't burn down their house and the food wouldn't poison them.