There are no Moomin originals – anymore.
Meet Series creator Marika Makaroff 

WeAnimate 2023-12-11 | wam#0024

Each new adaptation of the Moomin stories adds something to what we have seen and learned from the true Nordic classic. So does the latest Finnish-UK version Moominvalley in 3D, made by strong-willed women who did not know so much about animation at first, but were eager to learn.

Since 25th February the Finns have been talking about the new animated version of the Moomins on social media and over coffee. When one-quarter of the population has seen the first episodes, either at its prime-time, 8 PM TV slot or via Yle Areena, the online streaming service for the Finnish national broadcaster, it is definitely a hit and a keen topic of conversation. The Moomins have a special place in Finnish minds, as they do in many parts of the world.

From the perspective of the Finnish animation industry, it feels great that there is this kind of interest in a new animation series. Generally, people think that animation belongs in the children’s block on morning TV, and assume that journalists or adults, in general, would not be interested. Moomins, however, uniquely unite people across generations, from grannies to the smallest children. The new version is rated K7, not for preschoolers. Instead, Moominvalley is dramatized and visualized for the whole family, even for adults who know their Moomins already.

The new series became a possibility when the rights to the early 1990’s version had expired. Since then, the only other offering has been the Moomins on the Riviera feature, a French-Finnish coproduction that premiered in 2014. The feature film, which reached its main audience through cinemas in cities, had a strategy for sales, distribution, and finding new audiences, which was very different from that of the Moominvalley series. The movie did quite well in places where the Moomins were already an established brand, like in the UK and in Finland, but it did not manage to expand that audience significantly “The cinema distribution company in France, chosen by the producers of the film, was good but very small and independent. They did not make a lot of effort to market the film in France; hence its success in the cinemas was limited. Moomins are not very well known in France and would have needed more PR to attract a bigger audience” says Sophia Jansson (b. 1962), Creative Director for Moomin Characters, the company founded in the late 1950s by the original creators Tove Jansson and her brother Lars Jansson, father of Sophia.

The 1990-91 version of the Moomins, animated in Japan but produced by a Finnish-Dutch company, still lives strongly in people’s minds. For some, the beloved animated representation of the Moomins has taken on the feeling of a new original, taking over from the original children’s books or the 1950’s comics originally written for adults. The Finnish-Dutch production was a huge success when it was created and was lifted further by the flow of popular, licensed products that have made the Moomin character one of the most successful of its kind in Northern Europe.

Moominvalley, as the new series has been named, began in Stockholm where Marika Makaroff (b. 1973), a producer and a Creative Director in Finland, was working with Filmlance, the company behind the famous Nordic noir crime series The Bridge. At the time, Makaroff was ferrying between Finland and Sweden once a month due to work, “I was with my then 2-year-old son when I saw a glimpse of Moomins on the Riviera in the children’s playground area. I started to think that someone should do a new TV-version of the Moomins. I ended up founding my own production company Gutsy Animations in the UK and Finland, and hired a top-level production team to fulfill that vision.

“Early on, Marika pointed out the importance of making the new animation in 3D as it was the only way to reach an audience on a global scale. This was our ambition, of course.” Jansson adds.

Both Jansson and her husband Roleff Kråkström, managing director of Moomin Characters since 2008, looked very happy at the Moomin gala organized by the city of Helsinki, Yle and Gutsy Animations on the 25th January. The event was also the world premiere of Moominvalley.

It looks as if some of the most devoted fans would like to have their say in the handling of every licensed product and worry even deeper about carrying out Tove Jansson’s original intentions than the team working at Moomin Characters.

The Moomins have certainly grown into a global phenomenon beyond their creator.

Japan has experienced Moomins in three different versions, in 1969, the early 1970s and the latest in the early 1990s.

Germany, Poland, and even Sweden also have their own past Moomin versions, that later audiences may think of as new originals. Johan Hagelbäck’s 1980 animated short of Tove Jansson’s picture book Who will comfort Toffle was very loyal to the original, published in 1960. Theatre director Vivica Bandler (b. 1917), Tove Jansson’s first female lover, created a wilder interpretation of the same story for Dramaten, one of the main theatrical stages in Stockholm.

There are a lot of emotions linked to how each fan experiences their favorite characters and stories in the Moomin canon, sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark. Originally in a book format with 200 original illustrations by Tove Jansson, a lot was left to the reader’s imagination. Later, Tove Jansson created around 3200 drawings for the comic strips, and Sophia Jansson’s father Lars Jansson created even more. The comics ran continuously from 1954 to 1975.