Forget The Gingerbread House: Costco Offers A Mansion Kit

It's mid-November, which means stores are showing off their cookie-decorating supplies in full swing. Target, for one, is pulling out all the stops with its holiday cookie kits, featuring sugar cookie beach houses, gingerbread barns with animals, and entire miniature villages complete with Santa's house. Aldi, too, has rolled out a giant Christmas tree cookie kit

And then there's Costco, which has been ahead of the game for quite some time now. A few weeks back, an Instagram user noticed that the warehouse was selling three-pack gingerbread cookie kits with icing, chocolate buttons, and sugary decorations for $9.79. While the gingerbread men caused a divide among Costco fans, with some calling the cookies overpriced and less than amazing in taste, another offering from the retailer is bound to be liked by everyone. Forget the gingerbread house this year: Costco shoppers on Instagram have spotted entire mansions that are extra large, made out of gingerbread cookies, and ready for the taking.

Costco's gingerbread mansion is pre-built

Not only is Costco giving customers a bigger, snazzier version of a standard gingerbread house, but it's pre-building it for them, as well, according to an Instagram post by @costcoguide. Made by the Create A Treat brand, the gingerbread mansion is sold already constructed in its box, which means you can skip the work it takes to make it hold together and get right down to the fun of decorating. Additionally, the kit comes with cookie characters and trees, as well as colorful icing and candy in the form of gummy trees, jellies, stars, pinwheels, candy Christmas lights, and more — all for $11.99.

One commenter on Instagram said that the gingerbread mansion kits were so popular last year at their local Costco that the store quickly sold out of them by early November. Another cookie-mansion convert admitted that they will never again go back to DIY cookie houses: "These are the BEST. I'll never buy the ones that you have to assemble again!" If the raging reviews are any indication, it might be a good idea to stock up on these before they sell out for the second year in a row.