Every year, LEGO celebrates the Lunar New Year with themed sets that captivate fans worldwide. In 2021, marking the Year of the Ox, LEGO introduced the Spring Festival set, beautifully set within a traditional garden. Fast forward to 2024, during the Year of the Dragon, the LEGO Auspicious Dragon set emerged, designed to resemble a majestic bronze statue on a stand.
LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern
As we approach 2025, the Year of the Snake, LEGO enthusiasts can look forward to three unique sets. The first, a Lucky Cat, brings good fortune with its charming design. The second, named Good Fortune, is a vibrant pastiche of Chinese iconography, featuring a decorative fan, a calligraphy pen and scroll, and golden ingots. The third and most luxurious set, which we've had the pleasure of building and photographing for this review, is the LEGO Trotting Lantern. This set transcends its simple appearance, offering a rich, layered experience.
We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern
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Let's pause to admire the Trotting Lantern's exterior, a testament to LEGO's attention to detail. This set is adorned with an array of decorations, from red lanterns hanging from the buttresses to intricate gold detailing along the walls' borders. The walls themselves are a work of art, depicting scenes of open skies and clouds framed by rocks.
Constructing the lantern is a journey of layering. You start with the basic structure, then add layers of intricate details, and finally, more embellishments on top of those. This process builds anticipation, much like the now-retired LEGO Carousel, as you eagerly await each new decorative element.
Traditional trotting lanterns, dating back to the Han Dynasty, were powered by oil lamps that projected silhouettes of paper cutouts and turned propellers to rotate the images. LEGO's designers have cleverly recreated this effect, albeit in a simplified form. An upright rod activates a light brick, causing the lantern's base to glow with yellow light, which projects an image through a clear piece onto the lantern's side. Rotating the rod makes the image move around the lantern.
The packaging suggests using the lantern to project images onto a wall, but in practice, the projection is blurry and unclear. This feature may not live up to expectations, especially since original trotting lanterns weren't designed for this purpose.
The upper tier of the lantern is where the magic truly happens, revealing three hidden dioramas: a food stall serving dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These surprises are cleverly concealed within the lantern's cylindrical structure, creating a delightful visual trick. The set includes five minifigures, one sporting a snake costume, along with accessories like a plate of dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks.
Your decision to purchase this set might hinge on what you're looking for. If it's the rotating mechanical effect, it might not justify the cost due to its limitations. However, if you're seeking an aesthetically stunning piece that hides intricate, minifigure-scale scenes within a beautifully detailed exterior, the LEGO Trotting Lantern is a fantastic tribute to the Lunar New Year. It's rated for ages 9 and up, though its complexity suggests it's more suited for older builders.
For more inspiration, explore our picks for the best LEGO sets overall, the top Marvel LEGO sets, and the most expensive LEGO sets.
The LEGO Trotting Lantern, Set #80116, retails for $129.99 and includes 1295 pieces. It is available now at both Amazon and the LEGO Store.
