As much as I hate to say it… We ran to Wal-Mart to grab a socket set in a pinch and have beat the living hell out of a set of Stanley sockets and ratchet for quite some time without them giving up. We are not kind to tools, so if they can survive Scotty and I, they will probably survive anything you can throw at it.

If you don't wrench a lot, some of the "junk" tools actually work out quite well.
You just have to use common sense. If it looks and feels like a piece of sh*t, it probably is.

All that jibber jabber said… There's a Craftsman kit that a couple friends have that has a box with I think two or three drawers that has just about everything you'd need and would last you forever. That's the route I would go as most of the stuff I use daily is Craftsman with a handful of Snap-on here and there.

I'm done rambling now