LEGO Trotting Lantern: Celebrating Lunar New Year 2025

Each year, LEGO introduces special themed sets to mark the Lunar New Year. In 2021, during the Year of the Ox, LEGO crafted a set depicting a Spring Festival in a traditional garden. Fast forward to 2024, the Year of the Dragon, LEGO delighted fans with the Auspicious Dragon set, designed to resemble a bronze statue mounted 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 launch three new sets in celebration. The first is the Lucky Cat, followed by Good Fortune, a set rich with Chinese iconography featuring a decorative fan, a calligraphy pen and scroll, and golden ingots. The third and most opulent set, which we've had the pleasure of building and photographing, is a detailed replica of a traditional trotting lantern. This lantern set, like other LEGO builds with such focused themes, offers much more than meets the eye.

We Build The LEGO Trotting Lantern

98 Images

Take a moment to appreciate the exterior of this model, which is extravagantly detailed. Every inch of the set is adorned with decorative elements—from the red lanterns hanging from the buttresses to the gold detailing on the wall borders, and even the walls themselves, which portray an open sky and clouds framed by rocks.

Constructing the lantern involves a meticulous layering process. You start by building the core lantern, then add detailed overlays, and finally, top it off with even more intricate details. This building method brings an anticipatory joy, much like the now-retired LEGO Carousel set, where each new layer adds to the excitement of what comes next.

Historically, trotting lanterns from the Han Dynasty used oil lamps to project silhouettes of paper cutouts and generate heat to rotate propellers, thus moving the silhouettes. LEGO's designers have ingeniously incorporated a mechanism to mimic this effect. 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 sides. Turning the rod rotates the image around the lantern.

The packaging suggests that you can project the image onto a wall or surface. However, my attempts resulted in a blurry and indistinct projection. It's puzzling why LEGO would highlight this feature as a selling point, especially since traditional trotting lanterns were never designed for such use.

The lantern's upper tier is particularly impressive, opening to reveal three hidden dioramas: a food stall serving dumplings, a decorations stall, and a shadow puppet theater. These hidden gems, tucked away like a Polly Pocket within the lantern's cylinder, play on the viewer's perception of depth and space. The set includes five minifigures, one adorned with a snake costume on its head, along with accessories like a plate of dumplings, a red envelope, a shadow puppet, and chopsticks.

Your decision to purchase this set may hinge on what aspect you value most. If it's the lit-up, rotating mechanical effect you're after, it might not meet your expectations due to its limitations. However, if you're seeking an aesthetically stunning piece that hides intricate minifigure-scale scenery within a beautifully detailed container, this set is a splendid way to celebrate the Lunar New Year. It's rated for ages 9 and up, yet its complexity suggests it's more suited for those 18 and older.

For more LEGO options, explore our recommendations for the best LEGO sets overall, the top Marvel LEGO sets, and the priciest LEGO sets available.

The LEGO Trotting Lantern, Set #80116, retails for $129.99 and comprises 1295 pieces. You can find it available now at Amazon and the LEGO Store.