LEGO celebrates Lunar New Year annually with themed sets. 2021 (Year of the Ox) featured a Spring Festival garden scene, while 2024 (Year of the Dragon) offered the LEGO Auspicious Dragon, a bronze statue replica. 2025, the Year of the Snake, brings three new sets: a Lucky Cat, a Good Fortune set featuring Chinese iconography (decorative fan, calligraphy tools, gold ingots), and the magnificent Trotting Lantern, the focus of this review.
LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern
$129.95 at Amazon
$129.99 at LEGO Store
This traditional trotting lantern replica is far more intricate than initially apparent. Its exterior boasts extravagant detail: red lanterns hanging from buttresses, gold detailing, and beautifully rendered sky and cloud scenes on the walls themselves.
The build is a layered delight. You start with the core lantern, then add successive layers of detail, creating a sense of anticipation and joy with each addition. This echoes the delightful experience of building the now-retired LEGO Carousel.
Historically, trotting lanterns (dating back to the Han Dynasty) used oil lamps to project silhouettes via rotating propellers. This LEGO version cleverly approximates this effect. A light brick illuminates a clear piece with a black-lined image, projecting it onto the lantern’s side. Rotating an upright rod animates the projection.
While the packaging highlights wall projection, the image is unfortunately blurry. This feature, ineffective and historically inaccurate, feels like a missed opportunity. Far more impressive is the upper tier, which opens to reveal three charming dioramas: a dumpling stall, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These are cleverly concealed, adding a delightful surprise.
The set includes five minifigures (one with a snake costume), dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks. The set’s value depends on your priorities. While the light-up, rotating mechanism isn't groundbreaking, the stunning aesthetics and intricate, hidden dioramas make it a beautiful Lunar New Year celebration. Despite its 9+ age rating, the complexity suggests an 18+ experience.
For more LEGO reviews, check out our selections for the best LEGO sets, best Marvel LEGO sets, and most expensive LEGO sets.
LEGO Trotting Lantern, Set #80116, retails for $129.99 (1295 pieces) and is available now at Amazon and the LEGO Store.
