Super 9

I’m pretty sure I would have LOVED a place like this in highschool or college. I can just imagine bringing a gaggle of my giggling teenage friends here and oohing and aahing over all of the cheap and ridiculous items.
But nowadays? I guess stuff like that doesn’t amuse me like it used to. Or maybe after stumbling upon the 10^th cheesy/​goofy/​cheap/​Engrish-​ridden item, it just wasn’t funny anymore? God, I sound like a crotchety old woman now. I promise you I’m not.
Bottom line: If ridiculously cheap and cheesy items make you wet your pants with excitement, you’ll love this store. Super 9 is essentially just a large dollar store with an Asian spin. You MIGHT find something useful here (I found a couple of cute bowls), but chances are, you won’t. Unless disposable panties are useful to you?
But hey! If that’s your thing, go crazy. I’m not judging you.
Trust me, I’m a 26 year old science nerd who slurps baby food and wants to shove her hands down Bob Saget’s pants. I’m SO not in the position to judge.

OMG! Could this store be any better??? If you can’t find it at Wal-​Mart or anywhere, try this place. I was on the hunt for aluminum foil individual cupcake pans & ordered them online thinking I wouldn’t be able to find them locally. Lo & behold, I found them here! I had a major D’OH moment. I found the extra-​large lingerie bags that I get from Thailand here. WOOOOHOOO! The Japanese stuff is sooo freakishly cute & cheap! The cons of this place is that it’s very disorganized & is still under construction. Another con is that you can’t enter this place through the doors that face Seafood City. You have to walk outside & go in through the front entrance. Yes, I agree with the other reviews that you can literally spend hours at this place.

Amrita R.‘s ROTD of this store will go down in Unilocal St. Louis history as the most influential review of all time. Seriously. I know for a fact that I’m not the only Unilocaler to get myself over there as fast as humanly possible (cough:Mallory:cough), and I don’t even like dollar stores.
It’s weird that I don’t like dollar stores, since I am the cheapest bastard to ever walk the face of the earth. I buy generic Ramen noodles. Seriously. That’s how cheap I am.
I’ll start with the negative, since I’m a bitch. I hate that dollar stores lie their asses off. There are a bunch of signs that say «nothing over 1.99!!!» That is a complete and utter lie. There are plenty of things in this store that are more than $ 1.99, but most things aren’t priced, so yeah. And you can’t say nothing over 2 bones and then sell a 4 set of wine glasses for 8 bucks and say well hey, it’s only 2 bucks per glass. That would be like ordering off the dollar menu at McDonald’s and having your dollar fries be 20 bucks and they are like, «It’s on the dollar menu because it’s only a dollar PER FRY.»
I don’t save money at dollar stores because a) you never know what they are going to have and so you are guaranteed to buy things you don’t need, which is the opposite of saving money. Additionally, while some things are a steal, the majority of items that are a dollar you could get for 98 cents at Walmart.
This all being said, I enjoyed coming here. It was super awkward. The space was about 5 times bigger than it needed to be to house the amount of merchandise. It was dark, so dark in fact that I thought they were closed. A preacher’s voice was booming over the loud speaker, telling me to be grateful or else I’m going to Hell. It was rad.
They had your standard dollar store fare, plus a lot more. Too many items to name. It’s just better if you go see for yourself. I was pretty impressed with the entire aisle of china (no pun intended). Although in my experience, no matter what it says on the box, don’t put anything you get at a dollar store, except a hot pocket, in a microwave. Ever.
I got a really rad necklace for a dollar. Shopping at Claire’s wasn’t embarrassing enough. I really need to get my jewelry at dollar stores more often.
Overall, this was a place worth checking out, if for the shear fact that while it’s revolting to purchase cheap crap made in China at any other store, here it’s actually cool to buy cheap crap made in China.

Su-​per 9… Duh, duh, duh, DUH! Awesome. After reading the rave reviews of Hao and Amrita, this store was on my list of places to take my sister when she was in town in August. However, we never quite made it.
I don’t often get to U-​City, but my mom suggested that we check out Cheese-​ology, and asked if there was anything else I wanted to do in that area. My response was immediate. «YES!» There is a store that I have been dying to go to.
The other reviews completely set my expectations, and they described this strange place so well. It is a warehouse space… a little dark… a little seedy, but when I walked in and saw sour peach, grapefruit and watermelon Dots, I knew I was going to like it. Watermelon Dots? Awesome!
Just by accident, we immediately headed over the the Asian section. I saw little trinkets and do-​dads that I’ve never seen, and I had to keep telling myself that if I didn’t know what it was, I certainly didn’t need it. A few items really gave me some trouble, as I wanted them so badly, but I had to keep myself in check. $ 1.89 is not a lot, but it adds up.
Things I found that I had to get:
* Watermelon Dots
* Some really pretty ceramic rice bowls
* The same cloth tea bags that Hao found
* A crazy cross-​breed grape soda bottle/​can… clear bottled bottom and an aluminum can top
* Two glass soy sauce pour spout containers
* Two small plastic containers, each with three individual lidded containers inside (for paints)
* Three glass containers containing Fuji Apple slices
Things that I found that made me laugh, but that I didn’t get:
* Multiple items which had grammatically incorrect, yet adorable wording («Stylish café in afternoon of a holiday a cookie and music»).
* A German «coloring book» style notebook meant for writing recipes in with a picture of a cat in a chef’s hat, holding a giant red fork with an even more giant doughnut dipped in what I assume is chocolate… and the words «Ich mochte kein Gemuse essen»… which means «I might not have eaten vegetables». Classic.
I could have gotten so many other things including the traditional dollar store items (brown paper bags, off-​brands of food items, automotive items, hand soap, and greeting cards), as well as a million other awesome little storage containers that I am, admittedly, obsessed with and other things that I would have loved to grace my kitchen with.
All-​in-​all, this was a great store. Not as great as the Asian store I went to in New York, but the prices were about 9 times as much, too.
The only issue I had was that the girl who checked us out took forever, didn’t utter a word to us, had her kid sister with her, and didn’t make the experience so good.
Happy Shopping

This place is cray-​cray! It’s like a mega-​dollar store with an Asian flair.
When fellow Unilocaler Hao X. called me from the store telling me I just had to check it out, I stopped by the next day and I’m so glad I did…
This place is craaaazy huge! Even when you walk in and you think ‘ok, it’s not that big’ just keep walking and the aisles just keep getting longer and longer in the back.
It’s really easy to waste at least an hour in this place, I’ve been twice and I still haven’t seen everything (yet).
My favorite is the entire imported asian section in the back. I love giggling over the hilarious quotes on the notebooks sold there, as well as adorable heart-​shaped seaweed cutters (to pack bento boxes for lunch, if you’re looking to be a Japanese housewife), and heart-​shaped rice cutters (don’t worry, you can get star shapes too).
They had a really interesting asian baking section that had adorable cupcake liners and pans.
I went a little crazy over the bowls and plates since I’m into food photography, but note that not every thing is .99, 1.89, or 1.99, since I got a box of four bowls for $ 9.99 (definitely still a great deal).
My boyfriend went a little manic in this store because he LOVES to organize and it was a dream for him. The asian section has about a million little things to organize with, and I had to spend some time trying to convince him that we didn’t need a 2^nd tier holder to put in the microwave… but hell, maybe we do.
There’s also generic foods and drinks, sections on hardware, gardening, kitchen supplies, lingerie, snacks, and birthday/​kids stuff.
All I can say is that, I’m really surprised that every time I’ve been it’s been virtually empty in there and more people haven’t discovered it. I’ll definitely be back to grab more simple items and see the newly imported asian stuff!

On a day when I had a bit of time to waste before meeting my boyfriend, I decided to go to Seafood City on Olive to get some stuff. I noticed a sign next door that announced Chinese ceramics, so I decided to take a peek. The strange warehouse space I entered made me think of Chinese markets where I would buy clothing. On the other side of the space, there was a little store, beckoning to me with its crappy looking things. In my tired and bored state of mind, it seemed like a good adventure.
I meandered over, pulled open the side entrance door, and stared wandering through the aisles. They had your standard dollar store things — cheap off brand cookies, drinks, and shampoo. They also had boring hair ornaments and not so exciting seasonal décor things. I decided to take one more look before giving up. That’s when I wandered into the deep back of the store, where a 1.89 sign hung high over my head.
I looked at the things in that back section. It was an asian import wonderland! I found pretty origami paper, cute pens (off brand but still pretty awesome), bento box making supplies galore! I found little cloth teabags that my roommate really wanted to try, some tiny screw drivers for my glasses, and carabiners for my keys! They also had really adorable bowls and cups and chopsticks. I even found little seaweed hole punches for the people who want to make really fancy bento boxes!
This place is fantastic!