In the last of my LEGO® Spring Festival set reviews, it’s the turn of the largest of the 2025 sets, Trotting Lantern. As with all Chinese New Year sets, this is another deeply rooted in tradition and cultural relevance. Lanterns are often associated with Chinese culture and are mostly used as illumination. They are also used in different forms as a means of celebration. Floating lanterns are released into the air as a means of remembrance and rotating lanterns were used as early forms of storytelling. As modern technology has replaced the uses of these old devices, their traditional forms are now closely associated with times of celebration. Here’s a look at the Chinese New Year Trotting Lantern set.
Product Details
Set Name: Trotting Lantern | Set Number: 80116 | Pieces: 1295 | Theme: Spring Festival
Number of Bags: Bags x 9 | Instructions: Paper booklet + Builder App | Stickers: sheet x 1 | Characters: minifigures x 5
RRP: £89.99/$129.99/99.99€/149.99AUD/169.99CAD
Availability: LEGO Stores, LEGO Online and selected LEGO Retailers
Traditional ‘trotting’ or rotating lanterns used the power of fire to create a heat source to power the rotation of the lamp. Plus it’s light to project images or shadows. In the set, the fire is replaced with light brick. This is mounted on a central column which can be manually rotated. When the light is activated, by pushing down on the column, it causes an image found on a clear panel to be projected onto the outer frosted panels. There are two included in the set and they can be swapped out by popping out one of the door panels.
The next section up is much wider than the bottom barrel section. It can be opened out to show three different scenes. They are a little awkward to see and don’t offer much space around each ‘scene’, but they include a steamed dumpling food stall, a decorations stall, and a shadow theatre. They are fun little builds but are hidden away. You can remove the section from the base along with the roof piece on top of it, which does offer better access to the interior.
The final part of the lantern is the top plate, which matches the wider width of the second section. It doesn’t fully connect to this section; it is only held in place by a couple of studs. The lid plate has a gap in its centre, which allows the central column to stick out and enables you to rotate it and activate the light brick.
This is one of the Spring Festival sets that features minifigures. Unfortunately, there are only five, far fewer than the previous sets. Thankfully, one of the minifigures is inspired by a Chinese Zodiac animal, the snake, for 2025. As with similar characters, the animal aspect is represented by a unique headpiece. Apart from the snake head hood, the rest of the minifigures are fairly standard. Those wearing traditional outfits do feature new torsos, but the rest of the pieces have been previously used.
As this year’s ‘scene’ set, it’s probably less appealing than previous ones. The minifigures feel a little disconnected to the rest of the set. They do link to the cramped scenes within the set, but even those feel they could have been left out of the set and it wouldn’t have affected the overall appeal. It’s more of a decorative set than a playset. It does feature some interesting pieces such as the frosted panels, which are all printed, the silhouette panels and the new chain links. It’s an interesting set to build and a colourful celebration of the Chinese New Year but it’s not as appealing as previous sets.
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The LEGO Group provided this set to BricksFanz.com for review purposes. The thoughts within this review are those of BricksFanz.com and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group. Providing the set for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of the set.
