Moomin marvellous

F-Secure (a client of LEWIS) released details of its new Moomin-branded security software on April 1st via its 'News from the Lab' blog, complete with a news release featuring a quote from chief Moomin and all-round good egg Moominpappa:

"The world is a very exciting place”, says Moominpappa, the modest patriarch of the Moomin family, ”and it is good to go and explore it, and learn more about it. But you should be cautious, and remember that it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Even better was Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen's addition:

"In my opinion, virus writers resemble Moominvalley’s Stinky in many ways. So we've taken the energetically fearless Little My as our role model and now we are ready to take them on!"

In a blogosphere aleady dominated by April Fool's jokes so sidesplittingly hilarious that I'm surprised nobody reading them actually died from laughing, the F-Secure attempt was a refreshing blast of surrealist humour and retro cartoon action.

I, for one, have not even contemplated Moominpappa and his extended family since I last enjoyed them on telly some decades ago. (This is because I live in the UK and, unlike their home country of Finland, The Moomins are no longer staple viewing here. We have Celebrity Love Island now. Mind you, seeing this brought it all back.)

The brilliant and unexpected twist, of course, is that it was all real. "For some reason, a surprising number of people thought that our new cartoon-themed security product was an April Fool's Day joke," said the blog yesterday.

It's a shame this story didn't go much further than the blogosphere - it certainly made the rest of the attempts at an April Fool's gag strangely unsatisfying.

Tagged: | blogging | Moomins | Moominpappa | F-Secure | April Fool's
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | reddit | Furl