LEGO Trotting Lantern: Celebrating 2025 Lunar New Year

Each year, LEGO introduces themed sets to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and 2025, the Year of the Snake, is no exception. In 2021 (Year of the Ox), the set was a Spring Festival set depicting a traditional garden, while in 2024 (Year of the Dragon), LEGO released the Auspicious Dragon, designed to resemble a bronze statue on a stand. For 2025, LEGO is launching three sets to commemorate the Year of the Snake. The first set features a Lucky Cat. The second, named Good Fortune, is a pastiche of Chinese iconography that includes a decorative fan, a calligraphy pen and scroll, and golden ingots. The third and most luxurious set, which we have built and photographed for this review, is a replica of a traditional trotting lantern, known as the LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern.

LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern

Priced at $129.95 on Amazon and $129.99 at the LEGO Store, the LEGO Trotting Lantern, Set #80116, consists of 1295 pieces and is suitable for builders aged 9 and up. This set, with its intricate design, feels like an 18+ build due to its detailed and sophisticated end result.

We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern

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Let's pause to admire the exterior of the LEGO Trotting Lantern. This model is a showcase of extravagance with every inch featuring decorative elements, from the red lanterns hanging from the buttresses to the gold detailing on the walls' borders, and the walls themselves, which depict open sky and clouds framed by rocks.

Constructing the lantern is a process of layering. You start with the core lantern structure, then add layers of details, and finally, overlay even more intricate details. This build process evokes a sense of anticipation and delight, reminiscent of the now-retired LEGO Carousel, where you eagerly await the next decorative element.

Traditional trotting lanterns, dating back to the Han Dynasty, used oil lamps to project silhouettes of paper cutouts and heat-generated propellers to rotate these silhouettes. LEGO's designers have cleverly incorporated a mechanism to mimic this effect. An upright rod activates a light brick, causing the bottom of the lantern to glow with yellow light. This light shines through a clear piece with a black-lined image, projecting it onto the lantern's side. By turning the rod, the image rotates around the lantern.

The packaging suggests the ability to project the image onto a wall or surface, but in practice, the projection is blurry and unclear. This feature is not only ineffective but also misaligned with the original purpose of trotting lanterns.

The upper tier of the lantern is where the set truly shines, opening to reveal three hidden dioramas: a food stall serving dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These scenes are cleverly concealed within the lantern's cylinder, creating a delightful surprise. The set includes five minifigures, one sporting a snake costume on his head, along with accessories like a plate of dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and sets of chopsticks.

Your decision to purchase this set may hinge on what you're looking for. If you're after the lit-up, rotating mechanical effect, it may not justify the price due to its limitations. However, if you seek an aesthetically stunning set that hides impressive minifigure-scaled scenery within an intricately detailed container, the LEGO Trotting Lantern is a remarkable celebration of the Lunar New Year.

For more LEGO inspiration, explore our picks for the best LEGO sets overall, the best Marvel LEGO sets, and the most expensive LEGO sets. The LEGO Trotting Lantern is available now at Amazon and the LEGO Store.