Build Review Of The LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern 80116

The LEGO Spring Festival 2025 line-up celebrates Chinese New Year (also known as Lunar New Year) and the start of the Year of the Snake, with the traditional 15 days of festivities starting with the New Moon on Wednesday, January 29th.

As we move through this special time on the lunar calendar, we're taking a closer look at some of the build details in LEGO Spring Festival Trotting Lantern 80116, one of the stars of the Year of the Snake new releases.

It's gorgeous in red and gold, with unique costumed minifigures and light-up silhouette windows - so what is there to celebrate about this set, and what parts have given us the New Year Blues?

What's in the Box?

LEGO 80116 Trotting Lantern

Price: $129.99

Release date: Available now

Pieces: 1,295

Size: 23cm high x 21cm diameter

Insider points: 845

LEGO Trotting Lantern 80116 includes:

• an intricately detailed traditional trotting lantern model
• 2 alternative light-up silhouette windows
• 5 LEGO Minifigures (including one in the Year of the Snake costume)
• food and decoration stalls
• a minifigure-scale shadow theatre

The removable top tier of the lantern folds out to allow for imaginative play, while the centre column can be used to activate and rotate the silhouette window light brick.

First Impressions

Overall, we like this set a lot. The build process is enjoyable with plenty of symmetry. That means some repetition of assembling the same parts multiple times, but there's still lots of variety.

Trotting Lantern 80116 is recommended for ages 9 and up, and that seems about right. The repetition should help younger builders to improve their skills, and many will be able to put this set together without any adult help.

When it's finished, the lantern itself is very pretty. We'd like to see more made of the light-up features, but it's great that this set has the ability to light up and live up to its name.

LEGO Trotting Lantern Minifigures

There are five LEGO Minifigures in this set, which include:

• Boy and mother buying dumplings
• Man holding puppet for the Shadow Puppet Theatre
• Girl holding traditional lucky red packet
• Man in Year of the Snake costume

The Year of the Snake Minifigure is the selling point and though he DOES look cute in his snake headgear, there are some missed opportunities here. His holdable accessory is a pair of scissors, which seems to have something to do with hanging decorations.

It's not really something Chinese people do on New Year's Day, and there are a few better ways they could have gone. He could have been holding a tangerine, a traditional symbol of good luck with money and gold. We've seen tangerines before in the LEGO Spring Festival, especially on the beautiful LEGO Money Tree 40648.

Other options could have included a person holding a traditional calligraphy brush pen, which would be used to write on the decorations and is more appropriate than scissors. Or they could have focused on the Spring Festival aspect, by including a lady with a bunch of flowers or blossoms, indicating the new life of Spring.

Works Well With...

If you're building up towards a bigger LEGO Spring Festival display, Trotting Lantern 80116 looks great alongside these other sets to celebrate the Lunar New Year:

LEGO Good Fortune 80117

LEGO Good Fortune 80117 is another new release for Chinese New Year 2025, with a slightly stronger focus on the true traditions of Spring Festival.

It includes a vase of red fruits associated with good luck and prosperity, gold ingots, a calligraphy pen and scroll that reads "Spring" in Chinese, and a traditional Chinese fan decorated with blossoms and a pair of flying magpies.

With multiple instruction booklets included, it's a set that the whole family can build together, which could become a New Year tradition if your loved ones are also into LEGO.

LEGO Festival Calendar 40678

LEGO Festival Calendar 40678 is a functional little set you can use to display the date in day/month or month/day format.

It's from the LEGO Spring Festival 2024 Year of the Dragon releases, so the default design does say '2024' on the banner, but you can always choose the alternative assembly option and build it in Dragon Boat Festival mode instead.

Either way, it's still a very pretty build and as a calendar, it gives the sense of passing time as we move from the Year of the Dragon and into the Year of the Snake.

LEGO Lucky Knots 40756

We received LEGO Lucky Knots 40756 as a Gift with Purchase and it's an excellent way to enhance the display of Trotting Lantern and other LEGO Year of the Snake sets.

It's a 317-piece pair of ornate decorative red knots, traditional good luck charms that are tied and displayed to give good wishes to any visitors entering the home during the Chinese New Year festival.

The set is designed to hang up - it's 21cm high and 13cm wide, but less than an inch thick - making it the perfect backdrop to any LEGO Spring Festival diorama.

Pros and Cons

Let's sum up our final thoughts on 80116 LEGO Trotting Lantern...

Pros

• Very pretty build with lots of detail and satisfying symmetry.
• Beautiful colour scheme with lots of red, gold and teal elements.
• Rotating light-up feature with silhouette windows makes it a 'real' lantern.
• Removable top tier allows imaginative and interactive play.
• Themed Minifigures with holdable accessories.

Cons

• Pressing/turning the central rod to light the lantern is awkward and can cause bricks to break off.
• Light brick is dim so silhouette brick is hard to see. A double light would work better.
• Rotation is slow. It would be nice if you could spin the lantern much faster.
• The food stall (on the left side of the interior playset) doesn't stand very well or move very easily; sign does not move or come off.
• Year of the Snake Minifigure is a missed opportunity to represent more relevant traditions.

It's not 100% perfect, but it's still a very nice addition to the LEGO Spring Festival series. All in all, that earns it a very high –

8/10

How have you been celebrating the Chinese New Year?