<newbie fear>
I suppose I come at this from the opposite direction than most people, but I love my mini pedals. Through a strange confluence of events a couple years back, I ended up starting to make some noodly, quiet ambient music with an old Radio Shack SK-1 knockoff and a couple old pedals I had laying around from the previous decade's guitar-banging.
When I found out how cheap and tiny pedals were these days, I started stocking up on them. I have pretty much no dirt, just lots and lots of delays and modulation, and I've been struck by how much texture I can add just from a shit-ton of cheap mini pedals — I tend to think of my pedals as my "instrument" now, like a really cheap and bulky modular synth.
I'm actually starting to buy fancy stuff now (which is how I ended up lurking here) but I have a whole bunch of mini's that I think are really awesome.
(Top-mounted jacks confuse me and mess with the flow, by the way.)
</newbie fear>