9 Walmart Brand Products To Avoid Buying

Even though Walmart is shopped by millions of customers each day, not everything on its shelves is worth your hard-earned money. This might be especially true when it comes to the store’s own brands.

See: 10 Walmart Brand Grocery Items That Are Now Cheaper at Aldi
Learn: How To Get Cash Back on Your Everyday Purchases

While these items typically have appealing price tags when compared to their name-brand counterparts, the level of quality might be disappointing. For example, they might be less durable, of lower performance or just not taste quite right. In other words, they end up being a waste of money.

From kitchen appliances to snack foods, here are nine Walmart brand products to avoid buying.

Kitchen Appliances

It can be tempting to save $15-$30 or more on kitchen appliances, but not if they stop working in way less than a year.

“Unless you’re literally planning on using a kitchen appliance only a few times, skip the Walmart brand,” said David Bakke at DollarSanity. “The quality just isn’t there. I bought a microwave oven from them a few months back and it didn’t even last a month. I’ve had better success with kitchen appliances at Costco, and the prices are competitive.”

Glasses and Dishware

If you’re looking for glasses and dishes for the long haul, Walmart brand items might not be the best choice. 

“All you need to do is basically look at a set of dishes or drinking glasses and realize that the quality isn’t that good,” Bakke said. “Since these sorts of items are ones you normally want to last for years, you’re better off going another route and paying a little more for more durability.”

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Cereal

Saving a dollar or so each time you buy cereal might seem like a smart move, but not if the box sits in the pantry because no one’s eating it. 

“There are Great Value versions of classic cereals like Apple Jacks and Cocoa Puffs, but the taste isn’t even close,” Bakke said. “If you’re like me, it’s not worth it to save a few pennies when you can’t taste what you’ve known and loved since you were a kid.”

Equate Beauty Products

Jasmine Charbonier at Your Tampa Bestie recommends avoiding the following Equate Beauty Products based on her personal experience. She said the Walmart-brand makeup remover pads caused irritation and stinging to her skin. She also has tried the big-box retailer’s shampoos and conditioners and said they made her hair dry and frizzy. As for the Walmart-brand skin creams, Charbonier found that they had an overly chemical smell and feel, which made them unpleasant to use.

Mainstays Furniture

According to Charbonier, Walmart’s Mainstays furniture products are not worth the money. She said the dining chairs she purchased wobbled and became loose over time and the coffee table scratched and dented easily. Additionally, she said the dresser she purchased had drawers that didn’t slide smoothly and jammed, making it frustrating to use. 

Great Value Frozen Pizza

Before reaching for Great Value frozen pizza on your next Walmart shopping trip, learn from Charbonier’s experience. She said that the sauce is watery and flavorless and the cheese tastes rubbery and artificial. If that’s not enough, she also noted that the crust is soggy in the middle and doesn’t crisp up. She recommends opting for DiGiorno or Red Baron, which provide better taste and value in her opinion.

Great Value Snack Foods

Charbonier said that some of the Great Value snack foods leave a lot to be desired. She said the pretzels she’s tried are tiny and often broken into pieces and the potato chips are greasy and have “off” flavors. She also said that the Great Value Cheese Crackers are meant to be like name-brand Cheez-It crackers, but the Walmart version has a waxy texture and doesn’t taste like real cheese. 

Great Value Frozen Broccoli

“You would think that a frozen vegetable would be hard to mess up, but Great Value does a fantastic job of it,” said Tabitha Bailar, founder of Travel Compositions. “Its broccoli, when heated up, is the mushiest mess that it’s hardly recognizable as broccoli anymore.”

She added, “I understand that freezing broccoli breaks down the integrity of the vegetable. But most brands flash freeze so that there’s still a little bit of a crunch left when cooked. Not Great Value. It comes out like it was boiled to oblivion, then frozen. There’s just no structure to the vegetable anymore.”

Great Value Dill Pickles

“The other product I won’t purchase again is Great Value dill pickles,” said Bailar.

“I am not too picky when it comes to pickle brands. If it’s vinegary, salty and dilly, I’m a happy camper. Heck, I even drink pickle juice straight from the jar after the spears are gone. However, I couldn’t even finish the jar of Great Value pickles. There was some sort of metal taste and weird aftertaste that was hard to pinpoint. It made me want to gag and I had to throw it out. I’m going to stick with safe Vlasic from now on.”

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