The Hobgoblin



The Hobgoblin (Finnish: Taikuri; Swedish: Trollkarlen) is a powerful wizard appearing in Finn Family Moomintroll, who travels the Universe with his flying panther, in search of the King's Ruby. His top hat is encountered in the Lonely Mountains by Moomintroll, Snufkin and Sniff, who take it back to the Moominhouse. Chaos ensues, as anything put inside the hat is transformed, and Moomintroll himself is transformed into a strange creature by the hat when he uses it to hide in during a game of hide-and-seek. The hat also transforms the Moominhouse into a sort of jungle when cryptograms were placed inside the hat, and it once tranformed the antlion into hundreds of strange, tiny creatures.

Official website description
The Hobgoblin lives on the top of a mountain at the end of the world, in a house without a roof and full of precious stones. He rides his flying panther around the world, looking for red rubies. The Hobgoblin has magic powers and can turn into anything. Most of the time, however, he is just a bearded man with red eyes, white gloves, a cloak and a magic hat to gather his rubies in.

The Hobgoblin is obsessed with rubies. More than anything, he wishes to find the King’s Ruby – the biggest ruby in the entire world. Surprisingly, he finds it one day in Moominvalley. At first sight, the Moomins are slightly frightened of the Hobgoblin, but they later decide that someone who eats pancakes can’t be that dangerous.