$1,800 candy castle kits released by Japan sweets giant Meiji sell out quickly

TOKYO — Spectacular candy castle kits priced at about $1,800 each were released by Japanese sweets giant Meiji Co. on Jan. 16 and had sold out by the end of the day.

The name of the product roughly translates to “big castle kit made of sweets you dreamed of as a child,” and it is created by assembling approximately 9 kilograms of the company’s popular snacks.

Five sets of the candy castle went on sale on Amazon, priced at a hefty 272,200 yen (about $1,830) each, tax included. The product created a buzz on social media, and a company representative said, “We were surprised by the huge response.”

A total of 39 kinds of sweets, including the well-known “Takenoko no Sato” chocolate snacks and “Apollo” chocolates, are used as parts of the castle, which is delivered to the purchaser’s home in 16 cardboard boxes. When assembled, the castle is 2 meters long, 2 meters wide and 1 meter high. Meiji said it is “one of the largest candy creations ever built” in terms of both scale and price.

Keita Koshimizu, a chocolatier at the chocolate factory Chocolate Times in Mitaka, Tokyo, creates confectionery art as a hobby, and it became a hot topic on X (formerly Twitter). This led Meiji employees to propose a collaboration with him. Koshimizu was involved in the conception and design of the castle kit.

In response to the chocolate castle, there were a series of posts on social media such as, “Adults have gone all out,” and “Why don’t we have an offline meeting to build a candy castle?”

(Japanese original by Yuko Shimada, Business News Department)