A whole world of merchandise and media, from art calendars to coffee cups and T-shirts to an actual theme park ('Moomin World' in Western Finland), has built up around children's favourites The Moomins – our hippopotamus-like friends really are a treasure trove for the art of fine gifts. I remember watching these eclectic characters and their adventures in Moominvalley in a cartoon series back in the 1990s. But of course they go further back than this, back to Tove Jansson's original novels, the first of which was published in 1945 in Swedish by Schildts publishers.