Review: LEGO 80116 Trotting Lantern
6
To celebrate the Lunar New Year and usher in the Year of the Snake, LEGO have once again produced sets under the Spring Festival theme to pay homage to Chinese and East Asian culture.
For the 2025 Chinese New Year sets, the most substantial set is 80116 Trotting Lantern, an interesting set that celebrates the tradition of Chinese Shadow Puppetry, a form of art and theatre that harnesses shadow puppets to tell vibrant stories. This all takes place within a life-sized brick-built lantern which contains several small scenes.
I’m usually a big fan of the Spring Festival sets as this one hits close to home for me culturally, but I felt like 2025 was a bit of a miss with these sets and couldn’t quite connect to them.
Here’s my review of 80116 Trotting Lantern to illuminate some of my lukewarm views of the set!
Special thanks to LEGO for sending this set over for review.
80116 Trotting Lantern Set Details
80116 Trotting Lantern
80116
Trotting Lantern
5
1,295
US$129.99 / AU$149.99 / £89.99 / €99.99 / CAD$169.99
1 January 2025
Niels M. Frederiksen
Here’s a look at the sticker sheet for the 80116 Trotting Lantern set, which is a common sight with these Lunar New Year sets as the Graphic Design team usually go above and beyond to include poetry, puns and Chinese iconography which I particularly enjoy.
The build was fairly middling. There’s some really finessed techniques in the octogonal build, and it’s quite a tight challenge to fit in the twirling light feature, minifigure scenes and opening and closing functions, so the deftness and engineering to squeeze all of that into a fairly small footprint is very impressive and commendable.
However, the build was fairly drab in parts, mostly because there’s plenty of repetitive steps and sections throughout the facade.
The set comes with only 5 minifigures which is on the lower end of the scale as LEGO Spring Festival sets are usually jam-packed with minifigures, so 5 seems very low especially for a 1,295-piece set priced at US$129.99.
There’s some lovely continuity as the family that’s present in most of the LEGO Lunar New Year sets are included here, although it’s just the mum, dad and their kids with no sign of their grandparents or extended family which is a little odd.
The mum, daughter and son have all-new teal bolero-style cheongsam tops which have lovely bits of detail, but the dad and son have fairly generic City-style torsos.
Dumpling fans are in luck, as the set also debuts these new steamed dumplings, which are absolutely delectable.
As is tradition with the Lunar New Year sets, Trotting Lantern also includes a Year of the Snake minifigure, which corresponds to the current Chinese Zodiac. The Year of the Snake minifigure is by far the most exciting inclusion here, and I especially like his moulded head, as well as his new and exclusive torso which features a golden snake pattern across his samfu!
Here’s a look at the back which contains more of that lovely golden snake pattern.
The minifigure selection outside of the Zodiac Snake minifigure is a little disappointing, and I would’ve really liked more minifigures to pad out the set, for example, minifigures that operate and run the stalls.
Here’s the completed lantern which looks quite good as an ornamental build. It’s relatively large, measuring 23 cm (9 in.) tall and 21 cm (8.5 in.) wide making it a good size for a Lunar New Year display.
The LEGO Trotting Lantern has quite an artistic design, with plenty of details across every single surface. It’s quite busy, but thanks to the octagonal shape, and plenty of accessories such as miniature lanterns hanging from the sides, and Eastern Asian-inspired fences, there’s always something to look at, even at the top which has some mesmerising tile-work.
These printed pearlescent panels that adorn the sides are really nice as well, and add a lot of character to the Trotting Lantern.
Other nice design elements are the feet, and bottom section which feature some really subtle but bunning use of curves and proportions for the “feet” that will feel familiar if you own Chinese decorative items.
The Trotting Lantern of course is not without secrets, as the top half of the lantern can be opened up to reveal some interiors. Because space is at a premium, set designer Niels M. Frederiksen had to make do with using what little space on each door to place small mini builds.
On the right door is a small stall with New Year decorations, and also puppets used in the Shadow Puppet Theatre.
Most LEGO Lunar New Year sets have various stickered tiles with traditional Chinese quotes and poetry. Unfortunately, I don’t read/speak Mandarin, so I’ve had to employ some help translating these tiles.
The one on the right loosely translates to a pun that means “the snake approaches and turns over your bad luck”.
The set also debuts a new Chinese Zodiac Lantern, which has the corresponding year’s Zodiac Animal Printed on these transparent-red minifigure heads.
These shadow puppets are used in a minifigure-scale shadow puppet theatre that’s tucked in the back section of the Trotting Lantern. There’s a great sticker here depicting what I believe is Chang’e, the Chinese Moon Goddess who lives on the Moon. She’s seen here flying through the night sky with a Light Blue Classic Space astronaut which is quite notable as it’s a colour that hasn’t been used for a Classic Space Astronaut!
Could it be an Easter Egg or nod towards the upcoming LEGO Ideas Classic Space Astronaut vote….?
On the other side, we have a tiny dumpling stall! There’s not much to the stall, but the stickers are pretty cute.
On the central pillar are two more puns that complement each other. The quote on the left loosely translates to “a snake dances in the new year” and the one on the right translates to “luck and blessings approach”.
The “lantern” functionality is the main play and interactive feature in the set, and is powered by a solitary light brick. By pressing down on the large red central rod of the lantern, you activate the light brick, which can also be twirled to move the projector around the lantern.
There is a single wall section that can be removed to swap out the transparent panels to change the projection.
There are 2 glass panels that can be interchanged for the light projector functionality – one with a Deer that symbolises the coming of spring, as well as a cute one featuring Sun Wukong aka the Monkey King, a popular Chinese mythological figure that also has its own LEGO theme.
It works fairly well, beaming the image onto the walls of the lantern. For best results, do this in a dark room or with the lights off at night.
I also tried projecting it onto a wall and it kinda works although the image is very fuzzy.
While the projection works decently well, it also feels very much like a gimmick. Granted, I didn’t grow up in China, where shadow puppets might have a more significant cultural impact, so it’s not something that I personally connect with.
And one of the most glaring flaws with this is LEGO’s lighting system. This is after all a Chinese lantern, something that most people (including those who live in the West) are familiar with. By only utilising a light brick, which is quite small, weak and needs to be activated manually, it really defeats the purpose of this being a lantern.
This is one of those sets that would really benefit from a 3rd party lighting kit so that it can potentially be used as a lantern, and I do think it would look quite majestic lit up, but alas, that’s not possible right out of the box, and without investing in LEGO lighting.
What I liked:
- Lantern design looks good
- Year of the Snake minifigure is excellent
What I didn’t like:
- Low number of minifigures
- Bare interiors
- Seems quite expensive in the US, UK and Europe
- Doesn’t really work as a lantern
Final Thoughts
I’m usually very enthusiastic about the latest LEGO Lunar New Year sets, and I look forward to them as much as the Christmas Winter Village sets as they’re usually incredibly well-designed, tying in elements from my own heritage into the toy that I love.
80116 Trotting Lantern doesn’t quite hit the mark for me, and is a dim entry into the usually excellent Spring Festival sets. It excels best as an ornamental LEGO Chinese lantern that you can display alongside your other brick-built Lunar New Year models, but it’s a really expensive display model at US$129.99 / £89.99 / €99.99 / CAD$169.99. In Australia, the AU$149.99 price is quite good, especially when you factor in our frequent sales.
The low number of minifigures and bare-bones interiors also feel like afterthoughts, and I’d much prefer a vibrant Lunar New Year scenes like previous sets like 80113 Family Reunion Celebration or 80107 Spring Lantern Festival that really embody what Chinese New Year is all about – food, family and festival.
80116 Trotting Lantern just felt odd to me, and it felt like a boring set that lacks the charm of other Lunar New Year sets, and it wasn’t hugely exciting for me to build, or display.
If LEGO had used this set to introduce and debut a brand new continuous lighting system.. that may be something to take notice of, but alas, all we get is a singular light brick. Technology that has remained unchanged since its debut in 2008.
2025 seems like a big miss for fans of the theme, and 80116 Trotting Lantern is not something I’d recommend rushing out to buy, unless you can score a significant discount which will be quite likely, as I don’t see this one selling well at all.
Final Score
Audience rating
Thanks for reading! 80116 Trotting Lantern is available now LEGO.com, Amazon or your local LEGO or toy stores.
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