The Daily Immigrant: The Moomin Mania

The story has it that it all started with a drawing on the wall of an outhouse in 1930's. Since then these funny, hippopotamus-shaped creatures and their motley collection of friends have made their way into the hearts of the Finns. I am talking about the Moomins.

Most people have at least a couple of Moomin mugs

I have more than a couple of them..

The first book was published in 1945 straight after the Continuation War finished. At that time the book didn't appeal to the greater audience, the nation was too busy rebuilding everything to be interested in books and such. Despite the low interest in her story, the creator of the Moomins, Tove Jansson did not give up but published another book the following year. The second book didn't sell any better and the publishing house declined the questionable honor of publishing even more of the books that didn't generate any income. Jansson offered her third book to another publishing house and finally the Moomins started to receive some attention. The third book was Jansson's break through and since then nothing has been able to stop the Moomins from taking over the world.

Containers for coffee, sugar, flour etc.

The Japanese got interested in the Moomins as early as in the 1960's. Two animations were created in the following decade but it was only in the 1990's when a Japanese animation for kids became hugely popular in Finland (you can watch the animation online in Youtube. Just type in "Moomins" and an English version will appear). Originally the Moomin books and comic books were written for grown up people, but the Japanese did some editing to make their animation more suitable and interesting for a younger audience. When I was a child I loved the Moomins, even though some of the episodes were actually quite scary. :)

The pages of the Moomin notebook are being filled with notes about job applications sent

Eventually, the Moomins also made it to the cinema and theaters and the books were translated to 40+ languages. These days Moomin characters decorate anything that can be decorated. There are the mugs, the pillow cases and duvet covers, towels, notebooks, you name it. The oddest thing I have seen was a Moomin bra in Bangkok. At that moment I realized I've seen it all. Also, the Moomins are probably the only thing that can cause a riot in Finland. When a special batch of Moomin mugs was released to the stores, people were actually snatching the mugs from other people's trolleys and even some fights over the coveted ceramics were reported in the news. This all in a country where people don't even want to cross the street if the light is red.