This Costco Ice Cream Bar Is A Häagen-Dazs Dupe

The main draw of discount grocery chains and warehouse clubs like Costco is saving money. But you also discover early on that the many private label brands these stores have generally make good products, so you don't have to sacrifice quality for lower prices. This benefit is even more appealing when you can buy dupes of more expensive name-brand products, like Costco's Kirkland Signature brand Ice Cream Bars that replicate Häagen-Dazs' Vanilla Milk Chocolate Almond bars.

The frozen sweet treats are vanilla ice cream coated with chocolate that's studded with nuts. Both use almost identical all-natural ingredients for the ice cream: cream, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla extract, and milk, with Kirkland's also including regular and nonfat milk, and Häagen-Dazs going with skim milk. They both also roast the almonds, either in safflower or canola oil. But while the Häagen-Dazs option is covered with milk chocolate and coconut oil, Kirkland's has a "chocolate flavored coating." This outer covering contains sugar, coconut oil, nonfat dry milk, unsweetened chocolate, soybean oil, and soy lecithin.

As expected, the dupe costs less (we finally know how Kirkland Signature prices remain affordable). Costco sells the 3-ounce Häagen-Dazs bars in a pack of 15 for $15.88, and the 3.1-ounce Kirkland ones in an 18-pack for $12.47. Ignoring the .1 difference in weight, that works out to $1.06 each for Häagen-Dazs, and $0.69 for Kirkland.

Opinions about whether the original or the copy is better are divided in reviews and online comments. Some people were put off by the artificial-sounding description of the Kirkland's coating, while others called it waxy or noted that its chocolate was the thinner of the two, with fewer, smaller nuts. The Costco brand is wider and thinner than the Häagen-Dazs, and one Redditor explained that means you taste more chocolate with the ice cream in every bite, which they considered a negative. But another person responded that they liked the more chocolatey ratio. There were fans of both options who said their fave was creamier, and some declared that Kirkland's was better than the original. Wherever they stood, commenters tended to agree that both were good.

One person — who was a definite no on the Kirkland bar — actually sued Costco over it. They claimed it was false advertising to use "chocolate" to describe the coating, charging that it was mostly vegetable oil. A federal judge dismissed the suit, saying in part that the way the product was presented wasn't misleading.

In one Reddit thread weighing the sweet competitors, some posters wistfully remembered the hand-dipped ice cream bars rolled in nuts that Costco used to sell in the food court, one of its discontinued foods we desperately miss. A fan who was disappointed when it disappeared in 2013 even created a Change.org petition asking to bring it back, which garnered just over 2,000 signatures.