Stinky

Stinky is a small, brown, hairy thing created by Tove Jansson for the Moomin comic strip. He doesn't appear in the original book series, except the last short story, An Unwanted Guest. He is also a recurring minor antagonist in the 1990 anime Moomin.

As the self-declared villain of Moominvalley, he's a troublemaker and rascal who's always up to dodgy and probably illegal things.

Appearance and Abilities

Stinky is shorter than Moomintroll, but taller than Litte My. He is somewhat round and almost fully covered in ruffled hair. Only his limbs, eyes, nose, mouth and antenna are uncovered by hair. His legs are skinny and short, and the foots have three toes roughly the same length. The arms slightly bulkier, and the hands have four fingers and a thumb. The eyes are large and the nose is wide. Usually the mouth reveals a wide length of white teeth.

In comics, Stinky's hair, eyes and antenna are drawn as black and his nose and limbs are left as white. In the anime, his hair is brown, his eyes are red, his nose is pink or red and his limbs and antenna are pinkish or violet.

Stinky in the 1990 anime

In the Moomin comic books Stinky, as his name implies, stinks. Sometimes it's taken advantage of by making someone leave without having to say it. In addition, Stinky can and will eat almost anything, including Moomin's furniture. In the anime, the stench is never brought up, and the ability to eat anything is brought up only rarely.

Stinky lives in the woods at the foot of Lonely Mountains. In the anime, he occasionally rests in a hollow tree, a bush, or in a pile of rocks. This gives the impression that he is a skilled survivalist.

Stinky's "profession" as a thief shows as he can pick up locks, follow someone unnoticed and run away quite fast. Once Moomintroll was forced to admit that Stinky has faster feet than he has.

Personality

Stinky is descripted as a "professional" thief and criminal. He is greedy and thinks mainly in his own interests, keeping valuable objects and benefits greatly by making a mockery of others. He often belittles the Moomins as being too soft.

Stinky constantly causes problems, especially stealing goods for his own use such as items that could help him rob a bank. Therefore, the residents of Moominvalley preferably avoid him and he has virtually no friends. The Moomins however, have tried to be tolerant towards Stinky, although he can make even their tolerance to reach its limit.

Usually Stinky is just comedic, but occasionally he shocks the reader or watcher by doing things that might be considered life-threateningly evil. For example, he trapped the partially invisible girl Ninny in order to make her fully invisible again and force her into participating in a bank robbery. He almost tricked the Fillyjonk's children into swinging off a dangerously high cliff. And he released ferocious zoo animals in the hope that they'll eat the Moomins.

Stinky is clever, but he is also impulsive. He rarely considers his bigger schemes carefully and as such, those schemes almost always backfire. For example, he stole from Moomintroll mechanical wings but he did not know how to operate them and was blown to sea.

Stinky is still not thoroughly evil and not without human qualities. He is no more or less harmful than an ordinary petty crook. To the Inspector, Stinky is the only a "normal" criminal, but without him the police would be unemployed in Moominvalley.

Stinky does not particularly like the water as he keeps falling in it.

Stories

Stinky play a significant role in the final of Tove Jansson's Moomin book An Unwanted Guest. He appears under the name Pirate-Stinky and comes in the middle of night to Moominhouse. Soon everywhere in Moominhouse stinks and everything is messy. Eventually Little My goes down into the basement to investigate. Stinky sits on a kitchen chair when Moominpappa arrives and recognizes the guest as a pirate whom he has known in his youth.