Tove Jansson’s Fazer commercials from the 1950s – a rare collection now on display
The illustrators in the Jansson family and confectionary maker Fazer share a history stretching back more than 100 years, covering everything from advertising to product packaging. Before Tove Jansson began designing packaging for Moomin products, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and drew advertisements for Fazer. Now these advertisements are being displayed more widely than ever before!
Tove Jansson began collaborating with Fazer in the 1930s, eight years before the publication of her first Moomin story, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), a story in which Fazer’s chocolate bars appear in one of the illustrations. The collaboration, which began in 1937, included paintings and wallpaper designs for the Kalastajatorppa hotel in Helsinki, which at the time belonged to Fazer. As the story goes, Jansson spent the summer at the hotel, but could not afford to pay for her room, so she paid for it with her art. Kalastajatorppa still has Jansson’s paintings, and one room has wallpaper painted by her.
Jansson followed in the footsteps of her mother, illustrator Signe ‘Ham’ Hammarsten Jansson, and expanded her collaboration with Fazer to include advertising illustrations. Advertisements illustrated by Ham were published in the Swedish-language magazine Lucifer in 1922, among other places.
Tove’s advertisements for Fazer were published in the Swedish-language satirical magazine Garm, where she worked as an illustrator from the 1940s until the magazine closed in 1953. The world changed, but Tove’s collaboration with Fazer continued for a long time, and after the Second World War, the Moomins began to appear in Fazer’s advertisements.
Perhaps the most famous example is a Fazer advertisement published at Christmas 1951, in which the Moomins run around happily and seem to recommend Fazer chocolate as a Christmas gift without embarrassment. The advertisement has no political references or connections to a broader cultural context – the Moomins are simply enjoying the moment. The drawing conveys a warm feeling, celebrating that the war is over.
Other colour advertisements for sweets published on the back cover of Garm include at least the Mignon egg advertisements published before Easter, a summer advertisement and two Christmas advertisements. The colour scheme of the advertisements on the back of Garm always matched that on the front page, as can be seen in the Christmas issue from 1951.
The 1951 Christmas issue of Garm, front and back cover in the same colour. The advertising images feature a Moomin-like character who later became known as Moomintroll, but was originally called Snork. Tove used this character as early as the beginning of the 1940s, together with her signature, in Garm and several other works.
Garm, Easter issue, 1950
Garm, Midsummer issue, 1950
Garm, Christmas issue, 1950
Tove Janssonin mainos jouluna 1950Garm, Easter issue, 1951
Keväällä 1951 ilmestynyt Mignon-munamainos Garm-lehden takakannessa.Garm, Christmas issue, 1951
The back cover of the magazine Garm, published on 1 December 1951. The illustration has since been used as an illustration on the rarest Moomin mug ever made. Garm, Christmas issue, 1950s
The first Moomin story is illustrated with a Fazer chocolate bar
The first Moomin story, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), features a chocolate bar from Fazer. The first Moomin caramels from Fazer went on sale in 1957. You can read more about the Moomin collaboration here.
Until the beginning of 2026, you can learn more about the joint journey of Fazer and the Moomins at the Fazer Experience Visitor Centre in Vantaa. The visitor centre lobby has a small exhibition open to everyone, featuring a colourful Moomin-themed selfie wall, posters made from advertisements designed by Tove Jansson for Fazer in the 1950s, and a collection of items from the Moomins’ long history displayed in a showcase.
