LEGO® Spring Festival set 80116 Trotting Lantern is the largest of the 2025 Chinese Traditional Festival releases. I have already reviewed 80117 Good Fortune and the accompanying Gift with Purchase 40756 Lucky Knots, as well as a thorough run-down of all of the new and interesting parts in these sets, so I won't be going over the new elements in any detail here. Instead, I will give you a flavour of the build experience of this set.
Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
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80116 Trotting Lantern
- Release date: 1 January 2025
- Pieces: 1295
- US$ 129.99 on LEGO.com US
- CA$ 169.99 on LEGO.com Canada
- GB£ 89.99 on LEGO.com UK
- AU$ 149.99 on LEGO.com Australia
- NZ$ 169.99 on LEGO.com New Zealand
- DE€ 99,99 on LEGO.com Deutschland
- NL€ 99,99 on LEGO.com Nederland
- FR€ 99,99 on LEGO.com France
- PLN 439.99 on LEGO.com Polska
- NOK 1399,90 on LEGO.com Norge
- DKK 899.95 on LEGO.com Danmark
Building Trotting Lantern
The first of these bags contains parts to build the basic octagonal foundation. There is a minimal amount of SNOT building to position some 1x4 plates vertically, which will anchor the legs at a later stage, while 8 of the pearl gold Fence 1x4x2 Ornamental Asian Lattice with Circle and 4 Studs (5103) form the basis of the decorative skirt. We get a generous allocation of 20 of these in the set.
The next two bags build up a larger section on top of the foundation. This level includes the first examples of the lovely printed 4x6 window element in transparent opal (6516508 | 57895pr0010). These have rotational symmetry about their horizontal axis, so it does not matter which way up you install them. And there are 16 included! I can see these being used in many Asian-themed MOCs.
This level also contains the light brick and offers the option of two different "projection" screens for the lantern. Their designs are supposed to project onto the slightly opaque screens around the sides, but unfortunately that does not show up very well on camera.
These decals are printed elements applied to Panel 1x2x2 [Side Supports/Hollow Studs] in trans-clear (6516511 and 6516510 respectively). Take your pick, as only one can be installed at any given time.
Bag 4 contains elements to build 8 legs for the lantern. It was rather tedious to build so many of the same thing, but fortunately I noticed right at the start and so had a production line mentality, completing each step 8 times before moving on to the next.
The rest of bag 4 constructs an extension to the push/twist mechanism, so that it will be accessible once the top half is finished. We also make a removable door to provide access to the shadow panel, which can be changed out as required. The push down is easy enough, but trying to rotate it any distance as well (so that the projected image appear to "trot" around the lantern) is not particularly easy, as you keep having to readjust your grip and inevitably this causes the light to go out.
The second instruction booklet begins with bags 5 and 6 which build up the next level of the lantern's structure along with three side builds to put into the top half. We have a dumpling vendor's stand, a shadow-play theatre and a little stall selling figurines. Another 8 vertical trim elements need to be made, but as these are split across two bags of parts it is not quite as annoying as the leg building phase.
The upper level can be attached to the bottom half of the lantern via a couple of studs, so that it easily removable for play. Careful placement of the minifigures and side builds is required for the doors to successfully close with all the contents inside. There are quite a few jumper options on the base of the doors, so you should be able to find a layout which works.
One of the side builds – the shadow play theatre – has a little Easter egg on its sticker. It depicts a Classic Space astronaut in bright light blue flying in the clouds with a friend. Does this hint at the next colour of Classic Space minifigure we can expect?
Bag 7 contains the pieces for the lantern top internal structure. It's mostly studs-up building but there is some clever geometry required to allow the teal 3x3 curved corner plate to fit around the central hole. They are attached via the middle pin on each of their arms, which sit inside the hollow studs on top of the tan 1x2 Technic bricks. These in turn provide the correctly-aligned attachment placement for the four diagonal corner struts, by means of a 45-degree axle connector.
Bag 8 completes the structure and trim for the lantern top - and we have another 12 pearl gold fences providing matching decorative elements to the base.
The final bag (9) again involves some tedious, repetitive building. The first example is making 8 copies of the little "boot" shapes which fit onto the black 3.18 bars (visible from the previous step) by means of a hollow stud underneath a 1x3 rounded end plate. There is enough clearance within the base of the red curved slope for the bars to sit snugly and the resulting arms to leave very little gap once placed around the lantern top's perimeter.
We're not quite finished with the repetitive building as there are 8 red, pearl gold and tan tassels to be constructed. The fringes are actually minifigure broom bristles (90826) which make for effective tassels at this scale.
The top of each tassel sub-build has one of the new Chain with Bars in pearl gold (6512378 | 6891) elements – a new mould unique to this wave of LEGO Spring Festival releases – which attach to the hollow stud facing downwards in each of the red Brick, Modified 1x1 with Studs on 2 Sides, Opposite (47905).
Placing the top on the lantern is best achieved with the upper doors closed, as the tassels hang down a significant distance below the top of the doors. This was one part of the design I found a little frustrating, as they do get in the way and slow down the access to the scenes in the top half of the lantern. However, they do look good with the top half closed, as can be seen below.
Minifigures
The set comes with 5 minifigures: mum, dad and two kids from the family who have appeared in previous LEGO Spring Festival sets. It's nice to see some continuity there.
We also have the Year of the Snake mascot with a lime green snake head. I admit I'm not quite so convinced by the lime colour here, as it does not seem to complement the rest of the set's colour scheme very well and looks rather cartoonish compared to some of the recent New Year mascots we have seen.
The notable elements in the adult minifigures are all unique to this set apart from the minifigure head:
- Torso with print in Dark Turquoise (6529721 | 973pr) - also used for the little girl
- Costume/Mask Snake in Lime (6516506 | 7051)
- Torso with print in Red (6529812 | 973pr)
- Minifig Head, Eyebrows, Half-Rimmed Glasses, Smirk /Wink, Open Mouth Smile Print in Bright Yellow/Yellow (6465547 | 105777) - only in 80113 Family Reunion Celebration and 10350 Tudor Corner
The kids don't have any particularly notable elements apart from the turquoise torso mentioned above.
Conclusion
The resulting model is a striking and colourful display piece, especially for those with heritage rooted in the Lunar New Year festival. While there are some interesting parts included, some in large quantities, it is quite an expensive parts pack if you intend to buy just to break it down for MOCs.
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Nice review.
ReplyDeleteLooking at examples of real trotting lanterns, it seems like typically they have multiple images projected in multiple directions at once, which makes this set's use of a smaller, directional light brick and ability to project only one of two images at a time somewhat disappointing. The integration of the vignettes on the second layer of the lantern further limits the light the lantern casts, with the "floor" blocking the light from the lower layer. The concept is very cool but I'm not sure the execution lives up to it.