Just like the people in our countries “wouldn’t know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is”, they wouldn’t shop in dollar stores – so where can cheap tat be bought in your country?
While the concept of a store with only one price tag is rather unpopular in Poland, with varied price chains like Pepco or Action being far more popular, the few stores that are like this have 5 zł as the price tag. In 2008 that may have even made them “$2 stores”, but the recent weakening of the zloty has led to 5 zł becoming the rough equivalent of $1.
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Poundland or the 99p shop would be the best equivalents (although in practice I’ve found that a lot of things in Poundland aren’t actually £1 anymore). They tend to be found in poorer parts of cities. I guess they’re like the equivalent of what Woolworths used to be- they sell junk food, cheap children’s clothes, toiletries, CDs/DVDs, maybe some hardware (I used to get large packs of watch batteries from there).
In Spain, they are normally called “Todo a 100” (everything for 100). 100 pesetas were, more or less, 1€.
However, those stores are normally referred to as “chinos” (Chinese). This has prompted a lot of criticism among foreign redditors in Spanish subreddits, but people here (including the owners and the Spanish Chinese community) see it as a totally normal and not racist name.
There are some “1€ shop” places, but I think they have never been too popular.
Cheap tat in general is sold in places like KiK or TEDi (I think those belong together anyway), but I don’t think they ever had a standard price for everything.
So in Ireland we have (depending on the part) Poundland (NI), Eurogiant, Eurovalue, and Dealz. I am from South Africa and we have Dealz and Pep (also PEP home).I only recently realised that all of the above mentioned brands are subsidiaries of PEPCO in South Africa.
Flying Tiger Copenhagen.
It used to be called Tiger and as the g in tiger is silent in Danish, it sounds like tier, which means a ten (coin), so the price were 10 kroner (1.34 euro). But then again, some things were 20 kroner or 50 kroner.
Now, there’s also a copy version called Bent.
As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any “dollar store” type stores in Finland. I can only remember one supermarket chain’s [“euron päivät” (Days of the Euro/Days of one Euro)](https://i.imgur.com/qfyQHFP.jpg) campaigns, but then again it was more like [“rounding up days](https://i.imgur.com/TgiTmlc.jpg)” instead of the regular x,x9 prices.
Oh, and McDonald’s “euron juusto” (a cheeseburger for 1€), but that went up to 1,20€ years ago and now it’s apparently 1,80€.
In Italy it’s usually either 1€ stores, or just “chinese stores”.
It’s not really out of racism, it’s genuinely a sector almost exclusively served by Chinese nationals. They’d come in from China during the late 80s and 90s, buy a store in cash, and start selling mass imported basic consumer goods. Made more sense when China was dirt poor and producing stuff there cost like, nothing.
It got to the point that the rare non-chinese-operated shop of random plastic tat (mostly from the original Chinese owners selling them off) is still called “chinese store” simply because we don’t have another name for that sort of thing. It’s kind of become an institution.