The Moominshop [moominshop.com] has closed! Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone!

	90% (28)	What the hell is a Moomin?
	0% (0)	Who cares? Merchandising the characters was a sell-out, anyway.
	0% (0)	We should declare a world-wide day of mourning.
	3% (1)	Mwhaha! I must hoard all my Finnish trolls!
	6% (2)	I want to be Snufkin when I grow up.

Seems like a lot of people missed out on a vital part of their childhood education ... allow me to provide some explanatory information and links.

"A Moomintroll is small and shy and fat, and has a Moominpappa and a Moominmamma. Moomins live in the forests of Finland. They like sunshine and sleep right through the winter. The snow falls and falls and falls where they live, until their houses look like great snowballs ..."
- Kaye Webb

A visit to the Moomin Valley Museum. [dumbrella.com] The official site is here [tampere.fi].

A Guardian obituary [guardian.co.uk] of the author.

A travelling expedition [vic.gov.au] which gives a brief introduction to some of the characters.

A short extract [geocities.com] from one of the books.

A comprehensive list [moomin.ee] of the Moomin books.

And, for some reason, a 24-hour chat program [moomin.ee] from Estonia devoted exclusively to Moomins.

So, I mean without raining crap on your childhood or anything, but what's the big deal about Moomins?

How are they any more, well, anything than stuff like Sesame Street or Smurfs or Babar or etc.?

In Response to zamphir (#16053):

How does Babar rate with Sesame Street and Smurfs?

In Response to unFalln (#16054):

Well, Smurfs sucks.

Babar is too damn French. Or Belgian, or whatever.

And Sesame Street gives kids ADD.

In Response to zamphir (#16053):

More akin to Babar than any of those others, in that the Moomins were originally devised as a set of books in the 1940s. All merchandising, cartoons, etc., happened several years ago when Tove Jansson urgently needed money for medical bills and thus sold the rights to a company in Japan. I doubt I can say anything in particular to convince you that they are in any way special, but if you do have any young kids, the books are worth trying to find. Whimsical, literate, anarchical and original.

To give you an external reference for my taste in childrens' literature: my top five list of quality kids authors goes something like

Mervyn Peake
Tove Jansson
Roald Dahl
Lewis Carroll
Diana Wynne Jones

with Kenneth Grahame and Arthur Ransome duking it out for number six*. So if you're familiar with the other writers, you can probably make some assumptions about Jansson.

*I'm thinking Ransome is probably a quality amateur pugilist. But Grahame is sneakier, so it's even money either way.

In Response to zamphir (#16055):

And Sesame Street gives kids ADD.

Maybe, maybe not [msn.com]. Sesame Street does give you the letter A and D though.

In Response to Rich (#16071):

Wait, you mean my off-the-cuff, flippant, designed to offend the ignorant comment might actually not be correct?

What is the world coming to?

In Response to unFalln (#16054):

My parents banned us kids from watching the Smurfs because it was Satanic according to their church. In the right light, Gargamel does look like Anton LaVey, after all... yet anthropomorphic animals and monsters posed no such moral dilemma. Go figure.

I have no idea what a moomin is...but the whole finland thing made me have a flashback to a cartoon that I loved. Something about gnomes in Sweden. They are roundish, and have red cheeks. And grow to be very old. They also live in trees.

I find it VERY odd that not only was this a cartoon that made it onto the air, but that I was apparently so obsessed. I did find the name David the Gnome [foundus.com]

And if you, like me want to relive all the episodes, they are listed here [tvtome.com]

In Response to michele9993 (#16289):

Whoa, those links gave me some strange flashbacks. I wonder if my mom still has the gnome books. I recall they were very wordy and wonderfully illustrated much like Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book. [amazon.co.uk] One of those books may have been my first exposure to the concept of sex.

In Response to zamphir (#16053):

what's the big deal about Moomins?

I vaguely remember the Moomins, but they weren't a patch on the Clangers or Noggin the Nog, both of which I would happily watch with a kid now. Unlike most of the current crap.

And to evilly cross post, the number one children's author was whoever came up with the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to zamphir (#16073):

Either more research or Ritalin.

In Response to codeslave (#16143):

Actually, the Smurfs are supposedly meant to represent socialism and possibly even the KKK.

The Smurf Village itself is a perfect model of a socialist commune or collective. It is self-reliant, and the land is not owned by individuals, but by the entire collective of all the Smurfs, if the word 'owned' is even appropriate.

Papa Smurf represents Karl Marx. He is not so much the leader of the Smurfs as an equal revered by the others for his age and wisdom. He has a beard, as did Marx, and thus could conceivably be a caricature as well. And lastly, he wears red, which is the traditional colour of socialism. Brainy Smurf could represent Trotsky. He is the only one in the village who comes close to matching Papa's intellect - he is a thinker. With his round spectacles, he could also be a caricature of Trotsky. He is often isolated, ridiculed or even ejected from the commune of the village for his ideas. And of course, Trotsky was banished from the USSR.

...

Gargamel was the evil old man who always wanted to turn the Smurfs into gold. Undoubtedly, Gargamel represents the evils of greed and Capitalism. He is a ruthless, self-centered hermit, which illustrates the dangers of the pursuance of wealth. It is also no coincidence that Gargamel has distinct, Jewish characteristics. Under the more radical communist systems, the Jewish people were persecuted for, among other things, their stereotypical love of money. There is a distinct class system in the realm of Gargamel . . . he is the bourgeoisie and Azrael, Gargamel’s feline companion, represents the proletariat. Azrael the cat represents the exploited, lower class worker of the capitalist system . . . over worked, under paid, and unable to negotiate for better conditions. Azrael is often required to risk life and limb in pursuit of the Smurfs for its master much as the American workers devote their lives to their bosses’ best interests to earn a living. The word Azrael itself is astonishingly similar to Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.

More on that here [hcmagazine.com].

The KKK connection is pretty loose though. Basically, the idea is that all the smurfs wear white hats, except for the leader, who wears a red hat.

NOW YOU KNOW!!!