I don't think I'll ever recover from learning that the fuzzy dark feeling I remember the moomins series having was because there was something wrong with the copies distributed in Scandinavia. Somewhere on the road between Asia and Europe the tapes got dropped in a barrel of Concentrated Finnish Depression, so while the Japanese kids were enjoying a cutesy pastel 90s anime with occasional kinda scary scenes, us Nordics were subjected to the actual stuff of nightmares.
(left: Norwegian version, right: original Japanese)
and to be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way. to me at least, the "damaged" colouring just looks more like Tove Jansson's book illustrations:
this is just what nordic children's media is like. the 90s anime decided to revert back into its gloomy state when it got here because that's what the audiene expected of it.