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My Profile Top News Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day. Subscribe You are here: Home > News > Entertainment > Article Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Entertainment Film Music People Television Arts Industry Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures Your View The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSS Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Your View Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Big in Japan, but could America love Moomin? Mon Oct 5, 2009 9:01pm EDT Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] By Eva Lamppu HELSINKI (Reuters) - In one of the quirkiest book cults America has never heard of, a round-snouted troll is hauling consumers' wallets from their pockets despite the worst recession in decades. The license-holders for Moomin, who say license sales increased 35 percent this year, are contemplating expansion. "We want to grow and be as profitable as we have been so far," said Sophia Jansson. "But in a way that increases the awareness of Moomin, starting from countries where books already are sold." The artistic head and chairman of Moomin Characters, she is the niece of Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, whose creation, the Moomintrolls, soon turn 65. Moomins -- whose naive hero Moomintroll was the "nastiest creature" teenage Tove could imagine after a quarrel with her brother -- are a lucrative publishing and licensing niche mostly in Nordic countries, Japan and Britain. Since the 1945 publication of "The Moomins and the Great Flood," adventures with Moomin and parents Moominmamma and Moominpappa have featured in 13 novels and picturebooks translated into 40 languages, and thousands of cartoon strips. The characters have also been used to brand a wide range of products including kitchenware, diapers, DVDs and tinned candy. "They made me feel peaceful," said Tokyo-based Hideyuki Masumoto, 40, describing the characters he called his childhood friends while eyeing gifts in the tiny Moomin shop in Helsinki. "They remind us of how we used to live in Japan; in a small community where everyone knows each other." In Japan, children in the 1960s grew up with an animated television series of the trolls and loved Moomin, Masumoto said: his personal hero was Moomin's friend the wayfarer Snufkin, the "wise guy, who plays music and doesn't belong anywhere." Inhabiting a land called Moominvalley, Moomins play into a similar vein of comfort to Disney's "Winnie-the-Pooh," revived by publishers Egmont in an October 5 sequel. But the deeply Finnish characters tap much darker mysteries than Pooh. Bjorn Lindergaard, 30, a Dane in Helsinki on U.N. training, said he liked that the tales were inventive and realistic, and none of the characters were perfect: for example Little My, a tin-sized, fierce girl, with a positively aggressive temper. "The Moominvalley looked very friendly, but there was also a darker side to it. life was not just plain idyllic," he said. Peaceful and realistic is how people see Moomins, but they are not human, says Jansson, whose firm manages the Moomintroll legacy and copyrights including up to 300 licensees. "The Moomins are not people. You can't send them up the Eiffel Tower, they don't speak on cellphones, drive cars, or carry guns," she said. Continued... View article on single page Share: Del.icio.us Digg Mixx Yahoo! 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