190 Moomin mugs—and counting! Marjut’s treasured collection displayed behind tempered glass for protection
Finnish Marjut Helske has been collecting Moomin mugs for almost 30 years. In total, she owns around 190 mugs: some 130 collectible mugs in her display cabinet, plus the ones she uses daily and the duplicates she stores for later sale. This hobby even landed her on a Japanese TV show.
Marjut, how did you start collecting Moomin mugs?
In the late 1990s, I bought three mugs—a Christmas mug, Peace, and Love—for my youngest children. I noticed how nice they looked and started getting more for everyday use.
My hobby really took off when I found out some mugs were no longer in production. Around 2005, I started systematically searching for them at resellers. Meanwhile, I also collected basic mugs for my children. Initially, I kept everything in boxes in the attic, but when we built our new house, we had a custom display wall made between the kitchen and living room just for them. It has tempered glass that protects the collection from my grandkids’ fingers. My children took their own mug collections with them when they moved out, and one of them still occasionally collects Moomin mugs.
What’s your favorite mug?
Personally, I find the classic Teema shape of the Moomin mug to be the ideal coffee cup. We have about twenty mugs in daily use at home. The collectible series is in the display cabinet, which holds about 130 mugs.
Some of the most beautiful mugs in my collection are the old blue-background Too-ticky mug, the Hattifatteners mug, and the Friendship mug with Toffle and Miffle. I like the original character mugs best, and I’m not fond of the modern, more mechanical style of drawing. The worst ones in my opinion were from the new Moominvalley series with 3D illustrations.
“I enlisted family and friends to enter raffles so I could get the mugs for myself.”
My most valuable mug cost between 300 and 400 euros. None of my mugs are truly irreplaceable, but many have increased in value since I bought them. For instance, two of them were Arabia’s Moomin Day raffle prizes and can’t be bought in stores. I recruited family and friends to enter these raffles so I could get those mugs for myself.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve done for the mugs?
In 2019, a Moomin theme park in Japan released a mug available only there. On a whim, I decided to go get it with a friend. We flew to Tokyo, and a TV crew approached us at the airport. They wanted us on a popular Japanese show called “Why did you come to Japan?” They followed us all the way to the Moomin theme park, but the mugs were already sold out. We returned home, and later heard from the TV channel that they’d managed to find the mugs for us and shipped them to Finland. Being on the show got me a lot of Japanese Instagram followers, and one of them has even visited me. She also sends me Moomin mugs from Japan that aren’t available in Finland.
“So the mugs led me to Japan, a place I might never have visited otherwise.”
I’ve also traveled to Sweden and Norway to buy mugs that were first released there. Sure, I could have ordered them online, but I wanted to pick them up in person. The mugs have ended up taking me to places like Japan, a country I might never have visited otherwise.
“I could never sell my mugs; I’d rather leave them for future generations to admire.”
What’s still missing from your collection?
The Moomintroll Dreams mug, produced in a very limited run in 2005, and the Fazer mug, which is the rarest of them all. They’re so expensive I’ll likely never get them. A couple thousand euros is beyond my limit. But everyone needs dreams.
I’ve considered stopping once the display is full, but that’ll still take years. I could never sell my mugs, so the collection will stay for future generations to discover. I do have about 40 duplicates and such in storage that I plan to sell.
