Every year, LEGO celebrates the Lunar New Year with themed sets that capture the spirit of the occasion. In 2021, during the Year of the Ox, they released the Spring Festival set, set in a traditional garden. Fast forward to 2024, the Year of the Dragon, and LEGO introduced the Auspicious Dragon set, designed to resemble a bronze statue on a stand.
LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern
As we approach 2025, the Year of the Snake, LEGO is set to release three new sets. The first is a Lucky Cat, followed by Good Fortune, which features a delightful pastiche of Chinese iconography including a decorative fan, a calligraphy pen and scroll, and golden ingots. The third and most luxurious set is the LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern, a detailed replica of a traditional trotting lantern. This set, which we've built and photographed for this review, is much more than it appears at first glance.
We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern
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The exterior of the Trotting Lantern set is a testament to intricate detail. Every inch is adorned with decorative elements, from the red lanterns hanging from the buttresses to the gold detailing on the walls' borders. The walls themselves depict an open sky and clouds framed by rocks, adding to the set's extravagance.
Building the lantern involves a meticulous layering process. You start with the basic core lantern, then add layers of detailed overlays, and finally, even more intricate details on top. This method evokes a sense of anticipation and delight, reminiscent of the now-retired LEGO Carousel set.
Historically, real trotting lanterns from the Han Dynasty were powered by oil lamps, projecting silhouettes of paper cutouts and rotating them via heat-generated propellers. LEGO has ingeniously replicated this effect with a mechanism that uses an upright rod to trigger 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 and rotating the image around the lantern's side.
While the packaging suggests projecting the image onto a wall, the result is often blurry and hard to discern. This feature, promoted by LEGO, falls short of expectations, especially since traditional trotting lanterns were not designed for this purpose.
The upper tier of the lantern opens to reveal three hidden dioramas: a food stall serving dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These dioramas are cleverly concealed within the lantern's cylinder, creating an engaging visual surprise. The set includes five minifigures, one wearing a snake costume, along with accessories like a plate of dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks.
The 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're seeking an aesthetically stunning piece that hides impressive minifigure-scaled scenery within a beautifully detailed container, the LEGO Trotting Lantern is a perfect celebration of the Lunar New Year. It's rated for ages 9 and up, but the complexity and final result suggest an 18+ build.
For more LEGO options, explore our picks for the best overall LEGO sets, the best Marvel LEGO sets, and the most expensive LEGO sets.
The LEGO Trotting Lantern, Set #80116, retails for $129.99 and comprises 1295 pieces. It is available now at Amazon and the LEGO Store.
