Moominpa got sideburns in the Soviet Union, momma had breasts

in Finland and in most other countries Tove Jansson’s the Moomins have been seen more or less in accordance with Jansson’s original illustration idea. It was different in the Soviet Union of the 1980s.

Some Moomin stories had already been published in Russian translation before, and in 1978 Soviet animators made Moomin and Comet series based on the book. In that, the Moomins still looked familiar.

A different interpretation was seen in the one made in the early 1980s In the animated series The Magician’s Hat.

In it, the moomins, modified to be almost unrecognizable, have mouths and hair. The characters have clothes according to the binary gender concept and Moominamma also has a female body shape. Moominpappa had also received sideburns in the Soviet Union.

The snuffbox had a duck’s beak.

For a little known as Yle’s foreign correspondent told about the Soviet mummies that were noticed in Finland Maxim Fedorov in public in his Facebook post.

Fedorov, who spent his childhood in Leningrad, i.e. present-day St. Petersburg, tells HS that the Moomin stories translated into Russian were quite popular. They had been published as a part Fairy tales by Scandinavian authors series.

“At the time, many people didn’t even know how to connect Moomin with Finland, when there were no actual references to Finland in the books,” says Fedorov.

“A crossroad between the hobbit world and the noble home of the tsarist era.”

of the 1980s In Fedorov’s opinion, the animated series was the most important channel to the world of Moomin for children of the Soviet era.

“As such, the characters and their philosophies corresponded to the content of the Moomin books, but the appearances had been changed quite a bit.”

In addition to the characters, the Moomin house and Moomin Valley also looked different than in the illustrations of the original books and in the Moomin animations shown in Finland. Fedorov describes it as “a cross between the hobbit world and the noble home of the tsarist era”.

Made in the early 1990s as a Finnish-Japanese-Dutch collaboration Moominvalley stories -animated series Fedorov says he saw only after moving to Finland. Being used to the figures designed in the Soviet era, he did not recognize the original Moomins at first.

According to Fedorov, the popularity of Moomins in Russia in the 1990s was strongly influenced by a rock band called Mumi Troll, which was really popular.

“Besides the name, the band has nothing to do with Moomins,” he says.

MoominCEO of Moomin Characters, which supervises the use and licensing of the characters Roleff Kråkström says that the company has been aware from the beginning of the Soviet Moomin animated series, which was made without the permission of Moomin Characters.

“The Soviet Union was cool with copyright as a concept,” Kråkström commented.

“After the breakup of the country, the series has not been shown on any channel, and we do not hope that it will be shown again.”