Yeah the reason why Kingston is so prevalent down here, it's cheap and suppliers down here don't want to spend money to bring in any good, quality products, everything is to make money.
I bought one of the first Transcend 8GB flash drives along with a Samsung 512MB flash, this was back when these things were still expensive. I paid US$30 for the Samsung and US$450 for the Transcend. They were purchased in the US btw back in 2000 if I'm not mistaken. Transcend is still alive and kicking like I just bought it yesterday (going to be 11 years ownership). The Samsung cannot serve me any real purpose anymore as it's limited by its size, however it is also still working last time I tried it.
Good brands in my opinion.