Wilton Build it Yourself Grand Gingerbread Manor Decorating Kit

I wanted to ask for a refund for this product but it is not an option so I have to write this poor review. My family and I were so excited to build this gingerbread house. We tried to assemble it, 5 of us it took to try to assemble this thing. The pieces are very heavy. It is impossible to build this thing without other reinforcements. We tried for a few hours, then it collapsed from the pieces being so heavy. I'm very disappointed with my purchase and I would love to get my money back!! I included a picture of our sad gingerbread house in pieces in a box before we gave up on it. Not a good product at all! Save your $ and DO NOT BUY THIS HOUSE!!!!!!!

The size of the manor is impressive and much bigger than most other gingerbread houses. 3 of the panels were broken once but could be easily glued together. I think it is unavoidable with panels that large to all arrive undamaged. The gingerbread smells surprisingly fresh and there is a lot of decorating material. Great Value!

My son loved this house and has a heart of gold that he could repair the broken pieces, but it did not work too well since the main roof was cracked in two major places and would not hold even though we tried doing what the directions said. This arrived in a box-no bubble wrap and we should have returned it, but with it being delivered right before Christmas and with someone willing to try to build it broken, we went for it. The house itself is cute, but ours finally had to be glued with a glue gun. (Couldn't eat that part!) :) I was going to ask for a refund, but I couldn't mail it back. I would recommend buying this in a store, and I hope that the company sold this report this to Amazon. Wrapping it in bubble wrap would have alleviated a LOT of stress in our house for sure.

I went out and bought a bunch of jelly beans and Reese's Pieces to make a nice gingerbread manor, and I set a few hours aside in my calendar, and I tell my friend I'm bringing over a treat of sorts. And then I open up the box, and it's just a bunch of broken gingerbread panels. Not like a gingerbread house in need of foundation repair, but like crumbled after a earthquake. The gingerbread men are torn apart. It's a horror. It's like a house from gingerbread post-war Berlin.Man, I've been wanting to put one of these together for years, and this is really getting to me. It's not all their fault. I see now that I invested a lot in this, emotionally speaking. Maybe I never got to do it as a child. Maybe this is the closest I feel I can get to a real house and a real family. Maybe it's a symbol of a fractured and irreparable life. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I'm crushed.I dunno. I'm not saying don't buy it. I'm not saying don't dream. I'm saying don't place all your hopes in this gingerbread paradise. It's a facade of crumbling decadence, and it's spiced smell hides the fact that those hollow and crumbling walls won't welcome you into the love and belonging you're searching for.

This gingerbreak kit is a super fun family activity. This was the first kit I've purchased and it worked out great. The one surprise for me was that you need a full day or two. So, I would caution to give yourself enough time. Check all of the contents for damage when the kit arrives. If you have broken walls, you can "glue" them back together with the frosting, but it takes 3-5 hours for the frosting to set and hold the connection.As you build this kit, the frosting is used to hold the walls and roof together, and since it takes 3-5 hours for the frosting to set and hold together, we built the house structure one evening, held it together for 30 min and let it set overnight. The next morning we decorated.The kit comes with enough decorations to have fun. We purchased extra candy to add to the fun, which I would recommend.

It is one of the more complex and larger gingerbread houses. Most pieces were broken! We used most of the icing to re-assemble pieces to salvage this house. Just not worth it. Poorly packaged. Not enough candy to decorate with.

Durability is one star because it arrived broken.Easy to Assemble gets one star because I had to glue all the pieces back together before assembling the house, which made it less sturdy and much harder to assemble, particularly for the roof and front pop out pieces.Value for money gets one star because, foolishly, I did not price check and I discovered soon after I ordered it that I could have purchased this exact kit at W-mart for $12 less.Having to frosting-cement all the panels back together first really affects how pretty the house looks at the end.Overall, this was a very disappointing purchase and I wish I hadn't ignored the reviews.

One box was great. We opened them yesterday. The 2nd box.......every piece was broken. So disappointed. I had not even opened the shipping box until yesterday. The second box was trashed. . I know I should have returned the pieces but there is no way it could have been replaced in time. The icing was hard as a rock. The 1st box was average. We were able to thin the icing to make it usable. I didn’t take pictures as the kids just wanted to build the house. We did have fun but the kids had done pictures and everyone had to compromise. Next year......new family plan.