Saturday, September 14, 2013

Another Big Lots tea find

Now, perhaps, at a Big Lots near you: Thompson’s Irish Breakfast tea, $3.50 for eighty bags.

Thompson’s must be the maltiest Irish Breakfast I’ve ever tasted. Big Lots continues to bring my oikos new and surprising possibilities in tea.

Other Big Lots tea finds
Barry’s Irish Breakfast and PG Tips : Good Strong Tea and Hedley’s : Typhoo : Typhoo and Wissotzky

comments: 4

Adair said...

Our local Bog Lots doesn't carry tea, but it does stock vanished brands like Lavoris and Gleam, English Leather after shave and, believe it or not, packets of 10 Eldorado pencils, most likely the last ever made...It is a strange and fascinating store, full of the cheap and the sublime, though my wife cannot quite see the beauty of it, and I have to bribe her to go...

Michael Leddy said...

There must be less uniformity among Big Lots stores than I thought. In ours, the good tea is usually in a small International Foods section. The stationery aisle though is an utter disappointment. Years ago it had Parker Vectors galore, after a drugstore-chain buyout. Now, only the cheapest no-name products.

What do you bribe your wife with? Eldorados? :)

Adair said...

No, the Eldorados are the problem! ("More pencils????"). The bribery involves the Korean bakery next to Big Lots, selling luscious cakes and other sweets.

Off-brand taco shells are about as "international" as our Big Lots gets in terms of food.

The store is stocked mostly with whatever low-end production overruns come in on the trucks at any given time. You never know what you will find, and you can't count on things being carried regularly, except for those famous brands of yesteryear, like Lavoris and Gleem, which have found new life in places like Big Lots and Dollar Tree, and, oh yes, the biggest selection of off-brand batteries I have ever seen.

Michael Leddy said...

That’s very self-sacrificing of you to add the trip to the bakery. :)

Here’s some comparison shopping. A liter of Lavoris from Big Lots: $2.50. The same item from the Vermont Country Store (another home of old brands): $9.95.