Every year, LEGO honors the Lunar New Year with a series of captivating themed sets. In 2021, during the Year of the Ox, LEGO introduced the Spring Festival set, set in a traditional garden. Fast forward to 2024, the Year of the Dragon, and LEGO unveiled the Auspicious Dragon, designed to mimic a bronze statue on a stand.

LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern

As we approach 2025, the Year of the Snake, LEGO plans to release three new sets. The first, a Lucky Cat, embodies the charm of traditional good fortune symbols. The second, named Good Fortune, is a delightful 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 Spring Festival Trotting Lantern, a replica of a traditional trotting lantern. This set, like all LEGO builds with such focused intent, reveals much more than its surface suggests.

We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern

98 Images

Let's pause to admire its exterior, a model of extravagant detail. Every part of this set boasts decorative elements, from the hanging red lanterns on the buttresses to the gold detailing on the walls' borders, to the walls themselves, which showcase open skies and clouds framed by rocks.

Constructing the lantern involves a fascinating layering process. You start with the core lantern, then add detailed layers, followed by even more intricate details on top. This method builds anticipation, reminiscent of the delight I felt with the now-retired LEGO Carousel, wondering what the next decorative element would be.

Traditional trotting lanterns, originating from the Han Dynasty, used oil lamps to project silhouettes and rotate them via heat-driven propellers. LEGO's designers have ingeniously replicated this effect, albeit simplified. An upright rod activates a light brick, illuminating the lantern's base with a yellow glow. This light passes through a clear piece with a black-lined image, projecting it onto the lantern's side. Turning the rod rotates the image around the lantern.

The packaging suggests you can project the image onto a wall or other surface. However, my attempt resulted in a blurry, indistinct image. This feature seems overpromoted, especially since traditional lanterns were never designed for this use.

The upper tier of the lantern opens to reveal three hidden dioramas: a food stall with dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These hidden scenes, akin to a Polly Pocket within the lantern's cylinder, cleverly play with depth perception. The set includes five minifigures, one adorned with a snake costume, along with accessories like a dumpling plate, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks.

Your decision to purchase this set may hinge on what you're looking for. The lit-up, rotating mechanism, while functional, might not justify the cost for some. However, if you're after a visually stunning piece that hides intricate, minifigure-scaled scenes within an elaborately detailed container, this set is a spectacular celebration of the Lunar New Year. It's recommended for ages 9 and up, yet its sophisticated final look suggests an 18+ build.

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, Set #80116, retails for $129.99 and comprises 1295 pieces. It is currently available at Amazon and the LEGO Store.