Acme Mercantile

This place is pretty fun. They have all your traditional quirky store stuff like fun post cards, cute bags and funky candy. But then you walk up to a display of scrub brushes and spend way too long looking at them trying to find out whats so ironic about them that gets them a spot in this store. Then you realize they are just scrub brushes, and yes that is really just a normal hammer. It is like the housewares section at urban outfitters had a love child with one of those «Do It All» stores.
I was really impressed to see two cool books that I had never seen before. The more shopping I do at little locally owned stores the more I find the same stuff over and over, so it was nice to see something I had never seen before.

I adore this quirky little store!
Acme has a little bit of everything — a great combination of needs and wants. Ok… it has many more «wants» than «needs» but isn’t that how it should be?
My first day after moving to Ann Arbor I came to Acme in search of a shower curtain. Sure enough, not only did they have one but several to choose from.
I also stopped in during this summer’s 90+ degree heat wave to buy water balloons. Not for me, but for my 95lb. pup. She was chowing down ice cubes like popcorn that I froze water balloons to make mega-​huge ice cubes (taking off the rubber balloon before giving them to her, of course).
Ann Arbor doesn’t have many convenience stores that although it’s hit or miss, Acme can be given a look over before walking across downtown to the only CVS around.
And I seriously doubt CVS has tiki-​glasses, tentacle finger puppets or zombie survival manuals. Just sayin’.

Acme is a fun little shop with everything from hula hoops to clothes pins, and Russian tea to linen pants. It’s tiny, but there’s so much there that you get sucked in for a long time.

This place is not as interesting as it used to be. You can still find all manner of things there but it seems to have made the transition to slightly more practical yet still hard to find things from the wacky gifts and tchotchkes. This probably makes it more useful and profitable but I miss the larger selection. I still really liked it though and will definitely be purchasing a snarky bitch magnetic poetry set.

I love Acme. I work about a block away, and there have been countless times I have run down there for random things like a sewing kit, rubber cement, sidewalk chalk, nails, and more. They also have a fun assortment of novelty toys, books, jewelry, clothes, clocks, and coffee.
As there is no convenience store downtown — why is that, by the way? — it’s great to have Acme.

You can find a little bit of everything here, some useful and some just fun. It is cool to wander and just check out things.
I got James a space pen set and some cool items related to his fave hobby which shall go unmentioned. Fun stuff, I think he would have dug some of the skull items but I don’t so he will have to truck out here himself. I got my nephew a cool book about drawing too.
Definitely a fun stop. It was not my mom’s speed or anything but I quite enjoyed it and will stop in again.

So many cute and cool items — I love browsing through the store! And if you need a light bulb or other hardware they have a small but affordable selection of those items as well! HIGHLY recommended for your Ann Arbor shopping experience!

Acme Mercantile ROCKS! Whenever I am in town, I have to visit this very unique store. I wish there was one in Venice. It’s a great place to shop for gifts for others and for yourself. There is such a wide variety of cool, hip and fun merchandise, and you will find that most of the items are very useful and practical– not just eye candy. I highly recommend local residents visit this gem of a store and support the efforts of a shop owner who cares deeply about her community and is doing her part to add unique color to Ann Arbor’s eclectic palette!

As other reviewers have mentioned, this is a sort of wacky general store, a surreal five and dime. On a recent visit, there were 75 cent flyswatters for sale, along with environmentally-​friendly bath and body products.
It’s got wooden plank floors and the shelves are all painted orange. Goofy toys, household goods, deodorant and aftershave are all displayed in a mishmash. The place has character.

This is the place to shop if you are Wile E Coyote, most definitely. Toothpaste, pranks, cards, hemp clothing, it’s a store right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon — minus the Warner Brothers look.
This is the place to stop at if you’re looking for one of those cafeteria clocks that were in your high school. You know, the stainless steel one with the red second hand that you secretly wanted?

Love this store. Like a more grown up version of Peaceable Kingdom. You can find all kinds of awesome gifts here. I love their fifties signs and clocks. They have really cool shower curtains, these are hard to find. I hate boring shower curtains. I love how the ones here and plastic so they don’t need liners or get nasty. I have never seen shower curtains with flames or skulls on them! Don’t forget to get some luxury towels to go with them.
This is really a one stop gift shop for everyone. You can shop online too if you can’t make it in.

This store has a huge assortment of cool stuff. If you need to pick up a rubber chicken or a hand buzzer on the way home from work, you couldn’t ask for a better place or for friendlier people to buy it from. If you’re passing by, it’s worth stopping just to check out the weird and gimmicky assortment.
I also try Acme when I need office supplies like pens, paper, envelopes and batteries. It’s a good place to look when you’re downtown and you need something in a pinch: matches, corkscrew, cloak of invisibility, whatever.

As you glance from shelf to shelf at Acme Mercantile, you might think you are being transported among a variety of stores. Perfectly ordinary toothpaste or soap or cleanser are shelved alongside joke products or strange retro cocktail napkins or parodies of «Pat the Bunny.»
My favorite Acme choices: old-​fashioned glass salt and sugar shakers with chrome tops. They’re like the ones on the table in a self-​consciously fifties style diner. Also mugs with the Acme logo so you’ll become a Toon.

Acme is a vaguely socially conscious (unbleached paper goods, Seventh Generation dish and laundry detergent) vaguely hipster (ironic stationery, clever clocks, and pervasive nostalgic, derisive, self-​aware, so-​over-​everything aesthetic) version of the general store.
I quickly discoverd after moving to Ann Arbor that I could buy all the antiques, third world handicrafts, and teal and taupe social worker outfits my little heart might desire downtown, but not a light bulb. GO BLUE christmas ornaments and afghans and snowglobes, but not duck tape. Framed prints and custom-​designed chaise lounges and wine from local vineyards, but not a toothbrush.
Now, when I find myself wondering where in this godforsaken yippieland a person can get index cards, a beach ball, nylons, a french press, and a tootsie roll, I go to Acme.
Acme carries the versions of useful housewares that will be the envy of all your friends in their twenties. It’s not unlike a slightly grown-​up, more idiosyncratic version of Urban Outfitters’ accessories for the hipster home. The clocks just inside the door are fairly representative: moderately-​priced ($ 40-​$ 80) super-​nifty versions of a semi-​essential houseware. Expect the same from the martini shakers and espresso makers and throw rugs and dog beds and pens with punchnjudy aliens on top. Useful? Probably. Cool? Definitely.
The impulse buy jars on the counter are kryptonite to my change purse: mini Reese’s peanut butter cups, tiny pins with monkeys that say «hello!,» miscellaneous charms, and more ironic postcards. Acme always makes me wonder, why would I use a pedestrian pepto-​bismol prism eraser when I can use one that looks like a can of soup or a kitten or a dreamsicle? Who would use normal staples when they could be using magenta ones? And why would I bother to beg a ride all the way to some box store past the city limits to buy boring things when I can buy the cuter version downtown?