Each year, LEGO honors the Lunar New Year with themed sets that capture the spirit of the celebration. In 2021, the Year of the Ox, LEGO delighted fans with 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
- $129.95 at Amazon
- $129.99 at LEGO Store
As we approach 2025, the Year of the Snake, LEGO is set to release three exciting sets to celebrate the occasion. The first set features a Lucky Cat. The second, titled Good Fortune, is a pastiche of Chinese iconography with elements like 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, a replica of a traditional trotting lantern. This set, like all meticulously designed LEGO builds, offers much more than meets the eye.
We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern
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Let's pause to admire the exterior of the Trotting Lantern. This model is a showcase of extravagance, with every inch adorned with decorative elements. From the red lanterns hanging from the buttresses to the gold detailing on the borders of the walls, to the walls themselves, which are painted with scenes of open sky and clouds framed by rocks, the attention to detail is breathtaking.
Constructing the Trotting Lantern is a rewarding journey of layering. You start by assembling the core lantern, then add intricate details on top, followed by even more layers of decoration. This process brings a sense of anticipation and joy, reminding me of the now-retired LEGO Carousel, which similarly thrilled with its elaborate decorative elements.
Historically, real trotting lanterns from the Han Dynasty used oil lamps to project silhouettes and rotate them with heat-generated propellers. LEGO's designers have cleverly approximated this with a mechanism featuring an upright rod that activates a light brick, illuminating the bottom of the lantern 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 that the image can be projected onto a wall or surface. However, in my experience, the projection was blurry and hard to discern, making this feature less effective than advertised. It's puzzling why LEGO would highlight this as a key feature, especially since traditional trotting lanterns were not designed for this purpose.
The upper tier of the lantern is a marvel, opening to reveal three hidden dioramas: a food stall selling dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These surprises are cleverly concealed within the lantern's cylinder, playing a delightful trick on the eye due to our usual poor perception of depth and space. The set includes five minifigures, one sporting a snake costume headpiece, along with accessories like a plate of dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks.
The decision to purchase this set might hinge on what aspects you're most drawn to. If it's the mechanical effect of the lit-up, rotating image, you might find it underwhelming given its clarity and impact. However, if you're after a visually stunning piece that hides intricate minifigure-scale scenes within an impressively detailed exterior, the Trotting Lantern is a splendid tribute to the Lunar New Year. It's rated for ages 9 and up, though its complexity suggests an 18+ build.
For more LEGO inspiration, explore our picks for the best overall LEGO sets, the top 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.
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