Tom of Finland stamps

[2][4] Itella Posti Oy praised the artist's works as having attained iconic status in their genre and had an influence on, for instance, pop culture and fashion.

[1] The new Finnish Postal Museum [fi] in Tampere opened with an exhibit of the artist's work and letter exchanges to coincide with the stamps' release.

[4][5][6][7][8][9] Art critic Estelle Lovatt said the stamps were a "great statement"; she and others including Mark Joseph Stern, writer of an LGBTQ blog at Slate, noted that Finland then had not yet legalized same-sex marriage.

[3][10][11] In Finland, an online petition called for cancellation of the issue as "[neither] aesthetically beautiful [nor] culturally valuable", and the Christian-owned department store chain Halpa-Halli [fi] refused to stock them.

[24] However, according to Markku Penttinen, development manager with Finland's postal services, as early as the 1950s Finnish stamps showed naked women in the sauna.