Trader Joe's 12 Absolute Best Name-Brand Food Dupes

Trader Joe's may come across as Aldi's bougier cousin, but it, too, offers plenty of budget buys for the smart shopper. Fewer than 20% of Trader Joe's products are name-brand, since the favorite retailer, like Aldi's, focuses more on store brands. Even so, a lot of the products would look pretty familiar even to someone who'd never set foot in a Trader Joe's before. That's because they are copycats — products that are intentionally meant to resemble a popular name brand but may sell for quite a bit less.

Some of these products seem to be seasonal and have yet to reappear. Others, alas, may have disappeared for good, although with TJ's, you never know for sure. Among the now-vanished copycats we've known and loved are the Mini Dark Chocolate Mint Stars that tasted just like Girl Scout Thin Mints and canned matcha green tea that could be mixed with lemonade to make a Starbucks iced green tea lemonade taste-alike at a fraction of the price. The products on this list, however, are all still available at this time of writing, with one exception: The fall-themed sugar cookies are currently out of season, but as an unadorned version of the dough is still on store shelves, this gives us hope that we'll see them again before the leaves start to turn.

Trader Joe's Sweet Onion-Style Pretzel Twists, which were newly introduced just this winter, are, as the name implies, twisty hard pretzel sticks with a salty-sweet, oniony flavor. If this sounds like something you've had before, it may be because you've flown on either Alaska or Southwest Airlines. Both airlines serve Stellar Snacks Maui Monk Pretzel Braids, and the TJ's product is said to taste very similar. The difference, however, lies in the price, since a 12-ounce bag of Sweet Onion-Style Pretzel Twists is priced at $3.69, while a teensy amount of Maui Monk Pretzel Braids may cost several hundred when bundled with a plane ride. (You could also pay $5.99 for 12 ounces at Target.)

Trader Joe's Chili & Lime-Flavored Rolled Corn Tortilla Chips come in a familiar shape and flavor combo. They are essentially TJ's take on one type of Takis, only by some accounts, they taste a bit milder. The price, too, is more wallet-friendly, since the product retails for $2.99 for a 9-ounce bag. Takis Chile Limón Rolls, on the other hand, are selling at Walmart for $4.08. Admittedly, the bag is a tiny bit larger (9.9 ounces), but a markup of over one-third for an increase of just 10% in volume isn't much of a bargain.

Whether you find Peeps to be delicious or unforgivable, there's no denying they're one of Easter's most recognizable candies, right up there with jelly beans and chocolate bunnies. This year, however, Peeps have some competition from Trader Joe's new Marshmallow Eggs. These come in only one shape, as per the name, but four different colors: pink, purple, yellowish orange, and a kind of greenish yellow. The colors all come from natural sources like spirulina, vegetable juice, and turmeric, and the eggs are vegan, too. They cost $1.49 for a 1.5-ounce package of three, which is admittedly around the same price you'd pay for a 3-ounce pack of Peeps at Walmart, but some people say the TJ's version tastes better, and it does seem to have healthier ingredients.

Trader Joe's says that its Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie was inspired by a Polish dessert called mazurka wafers. The rest of the world, however, would recognize it as a KitKat knockoff: same crunchy cookies, cream filling, and milk chocolate coating. While this cookie-candy doesn't yet come in a wide variety of flavors, it has spawned a peanut butter-filled version that we hope will be the first of many more to come. Both bars sell for $1.19, although the peanut butter one is slightly heavier (2.33 ounces instead of 1.94 ounces). Both are better deals than the 1.5-ounce KitKat bar selling for $2 at Target.

Chef David Chang played a significant role in the ramen revolution that transformed a starving student staple into something that might cost $20 a bowl at a trendy bistro. His Momofuku Tingly Chili Noodles sell for $9.99 per 14.12-ounce bag at Target, but Trader Joe's sells a similar style of artisanal instant noodles for just half the price. A 13.4-ounce package of Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles sells for just $5.49, as does a 15.9-ounce pack of Spicy Squiggly Knife Cut Noodles with a garlic-sesame sauce.

Store-bought chocolate chip cookies are usually quite a disappointment compared to the home-baked kind ... or were, until Tate's came along. Tate's Bake Shop Chocolate Chip Cookies are thin, yet maintain the perfect balance between crispy and chewy. They also taste of real chocolate, butter, and sugar instead of some chemical concoction created in a laboratory. So, too, do Trader Joe's Gluten Free Crispy & Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies. The taste and texture are nearly identical to Tate's, and the price may be just a bit lower, too, depending on where you shop. At Trader Joe's, a 7-ounce box of these cookies goes for $4.99, while you could pay $5.99 for a similarly sized package of Tate's at Kroger.

Flamin' Hot Cheetos are so famous they even have a movie about them, but that doesn't mean they can't be duplicated. (Imitation, after all, is the most lucrative form of flattery.) Trader Joe's take on this celebrity snack is called Spicy Cheese Crunchies, and it is, as the name implies, all three of these things. According to one rave Reddit review, "These are so good. They taste like hot Cheetos but better. You can actually taste the cheese flavor, compared to a hot Cheeto that just tastes like ... hot and red 40." The price is $2.49 per 7-ounce bag, which compares favorably to the $4.79 you could pay at Target for an 8.5-ounce bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

If you check out a box of Trader Joe's Cheddar Macaroni & Cheese, it might look somewhat familiar. That's because the packaging style is remarkably like that of Annie's Macaroni and Classic Cheddar. The similarity, it seems, extends to the box's contents as well, leading some to speculate that both products are produced by the same manufacturer. One notable difference, however, lies in the price point: Trader Joe's mac and cheese costs just 99 cents per 7.25-ounce box, while you might pay double that for a 6-ounce box of Annie's at Kroger.

McDonald's used to advertise its signature Big Mac with a real earworm of a jingle: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun." The burger behemoth never did tell us what made that sauce so special, but Trader Joe's thinks it knows. Its Magnifisauce is clearly meant to be a McDonald's Big Mac Sauce copycat, and the ingredient label seems to reflect a mashup of ketchup, mayonnaise, and relish with a few unexpected spices like rosemary, paprika, and cloves. You can't buy McDonald's Big Mac sauce in stores, but bottles of a one-time limited-edition are going for close to $100 on eBay. Magnifisauce, on the other hand, is priced at a reasonable $3.49 for a 9.5-ounce squirt bottle.

If you were shopping at Trader Joe's last fall, you may have seen something new: sugar cookie dough imprinted with pumpkin shapes. This product was clearly a copycat of the popular Pillsbury Shape Pumpkin Sugar Cookies, although there were a few differences. For one thing, Trader Joe's pumpkins were faceless, making the cookies suitable for any harvest-related celebrations up through Thanksgiving, while Pillsbury's cookies featured a Halloween-specific jack-o-lantern. For another, TJ's cookies used all-natural dyes as opposed to Pillsbury's lab-created ones. Neither product is available out of season, but since Trader Joe's still offers ready-to-bake sugar cookie dough ($3.99 per 10.8 ounces), we'll be watching for the pumpkin variety to return in the fall. If we're lucky, more seasonal shapes may eventually be added to the lineup as well.

Oreo is almost a generic name like Jell-O or Kleenex. Even so, the brand hardly has a monopoly on the chocolate sandwich cookie concept, since there are numerous generics as well as similar name-brands like Hydrox. Trader Joe's version, which goes by the cutesy moniker of Chocolate Vanilla Creme Joe-Joe's, does have one significant advantage over Oreos in that it contains no high fructose corn syrup (plain old sugar is the primary sweetener). In some people's eyes, this gives it a decided flavor advantage. It may also cost less, too — a 13.4-ounce package of Joe-Joe's will run you $3.49, while 13.29 ounces of Oreos are selling for $4.99 at Safeway.

Your standard homemade PB&J is as square as the slices of bread it's made with, and you have to cut off the crusts yourself. To spare you the horror, Smuckers launched a product called Uncrustables, and in the fullness of time, Trader Joe's created a similar item that goes by the much longer moniker of Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches. Smuckers got mad and is currently suing TJ's for copyright infringement, something that may force the product to change in some form pending the outcome of the lawsuit. In the meantime, though, you can still pick up an 8.89-ounce box for $3.79 as opposed to the $4.99 you might pay for a slightly smaller package of peanut butter and strawberry jam Uncrustables at Safeway. In addition to the lower price, these PBJ empanadas are vegan and not as overwhelmingly sweet as the Smuckers originals.