Fabulous 99s

’99 was truly fabulous. In that year, the Euro was established, then-​Texas Governor George W. Bush announced he would be running for President, and I received a Sega Dreamcast for Christmas. Fabulous! Unfortunately, this store has nothing to do with 1999. Instead, it sells a wide range of products for under 99p. It’s an interesting sort. There are few food items that I wouldn’t dare touch (chips, chocolate, biscuits), but they are cheap, so, I guess that’s a positive. There’s really not much here, and nothing I would be really comfortable purchasing. There are many items here you could purchase just down the road that are only a few pence more, and are guaranteed to last longer.

Fabulous 99s is one hell of a name for a start. This distinctly unfabulous shop sells all manner of confectionary and cosmetic products all at the low-​low price of 99 pence or less.
In all fairness, loads of the things they sell are quite nice, and an absolute steal at 99p, but from another perspective, they don’t really sell anything that you really need. It’s more or less 50% products which are just variations on the theme of the biscuit, or at a push, the chocolate bar. Nothing of any dietary merit is available.
My other reservation about this place is that whenever I go there, I’m always followed around the shop by security. It seems strange to even have a security guard when every item is worth no more than a pound at retail value, so i’m sure he’s just trying to look busy, but I can’t help but take it personally.
Still, everytime I pass it I pop in to check out what cereal as fallen off the back of a lorry, because cereal is of crucial importance, and a pound a box in these times of financial crisis is nothing short of a bargain.

Fabulous 99s is a new 99p store just opened on London Road. It has much of the same random assortment of junk you find in most discount stores, all of which is 99p each. Sadly, whilst the things you find here might be cheap, I couldn’t really see anything that I would actually want to buy. Still, it is really new — when I looked round they were still putting stock on the shelves -, so maybe it’ll get better with time.