A man walks into a pet store, sees a bucket of tiny brine shrimp being used as fish food,
markets those shrimp to children via mail-order by giving them human faces, makes millions
of dollars, funnels that money into an illegal gun-running operation, is outed as a white
supremacist who supports the Ku Klux Klan, funds the Aryan Nations, says Hitler was an
OK guy, and inspires a TV show starring Howie Mandel. Then things get weird. It’s all
part of the incredible true story of the Sea-Monkeys, today on our first-ever episode of Throwback.
Welcome to the series where we take a deep dive into some of the most fascinating stories
behind the toys, trends, and events you might remember from your childhood. If you have
something you’d like to see us explore in a future episode, let us know in the comments.
Hopefully it won’t be long before we’re shooting those episodes in the super-fun studio
we were designing for this series (which mostly consisted of me spending a lot of time on
Ebay trying to find things from my childhood). For now, though, we’re doing the safe thing
and filming from home. The sea-monkeys I have in the office will have to fend for themselves.
I’m your host, Erin McCarthy, and if you’re like me, you probably had sea-monkeys as a
kid without knowing anything about what they were or where they came from. The short version?
It was a get rich quick scheme that actually got someone rich quick. But trust me, the
long version is worth sticking around for.
In 1957, a man named Harold von Braunhut walked into a pet store and noticed a bucket filled
with brine shrimp. He didn’t know it at the time, but that pail of fish food was Artemia
salina, a species of brine shrimp found in salt lakes.
A. salina, as von Braunhut discovered, has some fascinating biological traits. It can
exist in a state of suspended animation known as cryptobiosis, where living organisms shut
down their metabolic processes in the absence of water. It’s nature’s version of Carbonite
freezing, or something like what happened to Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man.
A. salina can survive for years in its protective casing in the event a lake dries up. But when
you add water, their protective shells hatch, revealing a translucent creature born with
one eye. They develop two more upon reaching maturity, and can breathe out of their feet.
Males have tiny little whiskers under their chin and the females can self-fertilize eggs.
To most people, the shrimp were just fish food. To von Braunhut, they were a way to
capture the imagination of children by selling what he termed a “bowl full of happiness.”
If he could send the dehydrated eggs in the mail, then have them come to life in water
using his secret nutrient formula, he was certain kids would lose their minds. Remember,
this was 1957, when children were content to play with toys like Freddie Fireplug and
Hobo Mutt, a one-eyed stuffed dog dressed like a homeless person.
Why did von Braunhut consider this secret world of shrimp so appealing? Maybe because
he had a tendency to see magic in the world. Von Braunhut was born in 1926 in Memphis but
grew up in New York City. As a teenager, he performed illusions as the Amazing Telepo.
After dropping out of Columbia University, he became a talent agent for acts like Joseph
Dunninger, a famous mentalist, and Henri LaMothe, who spent decades jumping from a platform
40 feet in the air and landing in a kiddie pool as shallow as 12 inches without killing
himself. The secret, LaMothe said, was arching his back, which gave him the posture of a
flying squirrel. He lived to see his 70th birthday, which he celebrated, like he did
many of his birthdays, by jumping into a kiddie pool from the Flatiron Building.
In other words, von Braunhut knew a good act when he saw one. Kids at that time were already
fascinated by ant farms—and von Braunhut thought the little critters could be a brine
goldmine. He spent years working in a barn on his property assembling a mail-order package
that consisted of one packet to condition tap water, one packet of nutrients including
yeast and algae, and one packet of the shrimp eggs.
Owing to their amazing ability to emerge from something that looked like Kool-Aid powder,
von Braunhut dubbed his product Instant Life and began approaching retailers in the early
’60s with what he thought was a guaranteed hit.
It wasn’t—because there was already something called Instant Fish. That idea came from Wham-O,
the toy company responsible for the Hula Hoop, and had a similar premise. African killifish
also lay dormant in dry conditions, and Wham-O marketed the eggs stuck in a cube of mud on
the promise they would come to life in a water tank.
But the killifish weren’t as plentiful as the brine shrimp and Wham-O couldn’t raise
enough to meet demand. It was a misfire, and one that retail buyers remembered when von
Braunhut came calling. Instant Life was considered an instant failure.
Then von Braunhut had another idea. Instead of trying to convince executives his shrimpies
would be lucrative, he decided to aim his pitch directly at his target audience—impressionable
children. In 1962, taking out an ad in a comic book was inexpensive compared to the television
commercials that major toy companies were producing.
Von Braunhut went on an ad-buying spree, grabbing space in everything from Batman to Archie
to romance titles. He didn’t discriminate—at least, not with comics—and made his appeal
to as many young readers as he could, using the time-tested method of selling straight-up
bullsh-t to kids.
According to von Braunhut, who wrote the Sea-Monkey ads and the 32-page handbook that came with
the kit, they could:
Be hypnotized. In truth, brine shrimp will follow light around, but that’s not exactly
a form of hypnosis.
Obey commands. Aside from following light, Sea-Monkeys have as much regard for instructions
as cats. They pretty much just do what they want.
Play baseball. Just no clue where that’s coming from. Though it did involve sending
more money if you wanted to purchase a patented baseball diamond for your sea-monkeys, so
that's nice.
Dance? They seem to like music, so, sure.
Race. Von Braunhut sold a speedway kit. Shrimp don’t really feel a sense of urgency, and
while they did swim along the track, they’re identical, so you couldn’t really tell who
won.
Rise from the dead. This referred either to cryptobiosis or the fact dead Sea-Monkeys
could be replaced by unhatched eggs, but this is not quite the same as reanimating them.
Sorry, kids, but your hopes of becoming a necromancer will have to wait.
Von Braunhut later said the Sea-Monkey ads appeared in 303 million copies of comics annually.
That was probably an exaggeration, but with popular comics selling hundreds of thousands
of copies a month, he had plenty of prospective buyers. He began getting five sacks of mail
every day from customers who were now shelling out $1 for this secret society of shrimp.
But what about this instant life claim, the one that said the shrimp would materialize
before your eyes in water? Ever the magician, von Braunhut was using a little sleight of
hand. When kids dumped that first packet of nutrients in the water and were told to wait
24 hours before adding the second packet of eggs, they didn’t realize the first packet
actually had some of the eggs. The second had more eggs, plus a dye that colored the
water, meaning the first eggs that hatched were suddenly more visible. Hence, instant
life.
It was also instant death. The tiny shrimp usually didn’t live more than a couple of
days, which prompted von Braunhut to team with a marine biologist named Anthony D’Agostino
at the New York Ocean Science Laboratory, or NYOS, to create a hybrid species of shrimp,
Artemia NYOS. They were more durable thanks to a process that “he flamboyantly called
superhomeogenation,” in the words of The New York Times.
Like Sea-Monkey shortstops, it was totally made up. Von Braunhut even offered a kind
of shrimp life insurance, promising that kids would see their tiny pets thrive for years
to come.
In the meantime, von Braunhut had become a mail order mogul, using a carnival barker
approach to market an entire array of novelties. To name just a few:
Remember X-Ray Spex, which promised to let the wearer see through clothing? That was
von Braunhut. Young voyeurs were disappointed to find out they were really just glasses
stuffed with bird feathers that diffracted light, creating two images and a darker area
where they overlapped that you could interpret as an X-ray image.
That led to Aqua-Spex, which promised to let you see right into water, eliminating glare.
These were just tinted lenses.
There were Hypno-Spex, which promised to put people under your control, but the spinning
spirals on the lenses were more distracting than hypnotic.
There was Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters, which was a monster on a card that sprouted something
resembling hair from mineral crystals when watered.
He also marketed Crazy Crabs, which were nothing more than a hermit crab shipped in a box.
But von Braunhut’s real triumph, meaning the one thing that should have gotten him
sued but didn’t, was Invisible Goldfish, a kit that guaranteed a breed of fish you’d
never be able to see. Kids who sent away for it got a fishbowl, some seaweed, and fish
food, but no fish. They were, after all, invisible.
None of it resonated quite like Sea-Monkeys, which got another boost in the early ’70s
when a comic book artist named Joe Orlando drew the most famous Sea-Monkeys advertisement
ever—a depiction of an entire Sea-Monkey family with human facial features. There was
a disclaimer—“Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia salina”—but kids, who
are not known for reading the fine print, were captivated. They could buy vitamins for
their Sea-Monkeys, a mating powder that was supposed to make for some kind of Sea-Monkey
date night, and a banana treat.
The tank came with a built-in magnifying glass to see the shrimp in all its three-eyed glory.
There was even an Aqua Leash to relocate the Sea-Monkeys in case kids bought the optional
necklaces or wrist watches that could temporarily house their aquatic pets. As an added bonus,
the Aqua Leash could also be repurposed to suck out the corpses of dead Sea-Monkeys.
Thanks to von Braunhut’s new species of brine shrimp and his marketing techniques,
Sea-Monkeys were a certifiable sensation--one that made him a millionaire. And really, the
idea of attempting to breed a master race of pet shrimp wasn’t so far-fetched. Don’t
forget that Von Braunhut was, in the words of the Washington Post, “active in the anti-Semitic,
neo-Nazi right.” He was also Jewish. We’ll do our best to make sense of this, but no
promises.
Von Braunhut was actually born Harold Nathan Braunhut, to parents Jeannette and Edward
Braunhut. The family went to synagogue, at least occasionally, and Braunhut, according
to his cousin’s recollection, probably had a bar mitzvah. His father died in 1957, the
same year Braunhut stumbled upon the shrimp, and his mother followed in 1960. Both were
buried in a Jewish cemetery, which Braunhut paid maintenance fees on.
Somewhere along the line, he added the “von” so his name sounded more Germanic, according
to the Daily Telegraph. And then he invented the Kiyoga Agent M5, a self-defense weapon
von Braunhut began working on in the late 1960s that looked a little something like
this[a]. The Kiyoga was a collapsible baton with coils, which von Braunhut marketed as
a tool for people unable to get a license to carry a firearm. It was responsible for
a few of the roughly 200 patents he was awarded in his lifetime.
In 1979, he was actually arrested for bringing this type of weapon through LaGuardia Airport,
though the charges of possessing an illegal weapon were dismissed when prosecutors realized
it was too new and too strange to fall under the relevant legislation.
The Kiyoga is an important part of Sea-Monkey lore. In 1988, the Washington Post and the
Spokane Spokesman-Review published stories revealing that the weapon was being advertised
as part of a fundraiser for Richard Butler, the leader of the Aryan Nations who needed
money to fight charges of sedition, the polite term for plotting to overthrow the government.
Butler wrote that for each Kiyoga his followers bought, the manufacturer—that would be von
Braunhut—would pledge $25 to his legal fund. Butler, who was acquitted, called von Braunhut
a longtime friend and a “member of the Aryan race who has supported us quite a few years.”
According to news reports, von Braunhut had attended numerous Aryan Nations gatherings.
He was also leader of the Imperial Order of the Black Eagle, which was affiliated with
Aryan Nations. Even though they always suspected he was Jewish, the white supremacists didn’t
seem to care, probably because he was a generous donor. In 1985, it was reported he lent a
Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan named Dale Reusch $12,000 to buy 83 illegal guns. Reusch
was indicted and received a fine and probation, but von Braunhut was never named in the prosecution’s
case. He was said to be happy to cooperate, though, and even brought some Sea-Monkeys
to his meeting with the U.S. attorney.
von Braunhut refused to comment on the allegations, other than to tell the Seattle Times that,
quote, “You know what side I’m on.” OK, thanks for clearing that up, Harold. Not
sinister at all.
If you think lighting a cross on fire at a white power rally is a bad look in the toy
business, you’d be right. And that isn’t a hypothetical—according to The Southern
Poverty Law Center, von Braunhut did exactly that. As the Sea-Monkey empire grew, he enlisted
a company called Larami Limited to handle distribution. After his ties to the Aryan
Nations were revealed, the company confronted von Braunhut, who told their vice-president
that Hitler wasn’t a bad guy, he just got bad press. They distanced themselves from
von Braunhut, and many comic book publishers stopped taking his ads.
But that wasn’t the end of the Sea-Monkeys. In fact, their highest-profile project came
not long after, in 1992, when Howie Mandel co-created, produced, and starred in a CBS
Saturday morning live-action series titled The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys.
Mandel played a professor who left his human-shrimp creations alone in his lighthouse laboratory
to get into trouble. Some sequences used animatronics and others were done in a hybrid animation
style featuring puppets and miniatures provided by the Chiodo Brothers, who produced the Large
Marge sequence in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
Mandel said he did the show after his daughter became curious about Sea-Monkeys and he thought
the premise could be the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon. “The Amazing Live
Sea-Monkeys… brine shrimp in a big tank! Brine Shrimp power!”
CBS said it was one of the most expensive kid’s shows to ever air on Saturday mornings.
They eventually found a way to cut costs by cancelling the show after 11 episodes.
That wasn’t their only moment in the pop culture sun, though. Sea monkeys have been
name dropped in songs by Liz Phair and the Pixies, and they’ve been featured on TV
shows like South Park, Roseanne, The Simpsons, and Desperate Housewives, to name just a few.
There was even a sea monkey video game, though its reception wasn’t particularly warm.
One review online called it, quotes, “a cheap knock-off of The Sims mixed with a cheaper
knock-off of Black and White.” Ouch.
The shrimp had more success off of planet earth. In 1998, they joined astronaut John
Glenn on a mission to space. They returned to Earth to hatch to see what effects cosmic
radiation has on organisms. Brine shrimp are also used to test toxicity of chemicals, which
is not a recommended practice in the Sea-Monkey handbook.
The Sea-Monkeys continued to sell to the general public, too, going from one distributor to
another. In 2000, the Los Angeles Times reported that a company called Educational Insights
was distributing it under their ExploraToy division with the full knowledge of the allegations
against von Braunhut. Company executives said they never asked him about the charges directly
and didn’t think he’d be the type of person to spread hate speech. When the reporter showed
them newsletters from the National Anti-Zionist Institute, which used a P.O. Box also used
to order Sea Monkey paraphernalia, executives said he denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, Von Braunhut—who was also an ordained minister—officiated over the funeral
of Richard Butler’s wife one month after signing his licensing deal with the company.
He also was photographed wearing Aryan Nations lapel pins to planning board meetings in Charles
County, Maryland, according to the Washington Post.
Von Braunhut died in 2003 at the age of 77. Transcience, the company he started to produce
Sea-Monkeys, was inherited by his second wife, the amazingly-named Yolanda Signorelli von
Braunhut, whom he married in 1980. She replaced him as CEO of the company.
Yolanda is a whole other story. A former model who appeared in bondage films in the 1960s,
she claimed her mother was one of the inspirations for Lois Lane. Yolanda continued to run the
Sea-Monkey empire from her home in Maryland and signed a deal with Big Time Toys in 2007
for that company to package and distribute the kits for Transcience. The actual shrimp
and the nutrient packet, which are all considered trade secrets with the nutrient formula locked
in a vault, would be supplied by Yolanda. Big Time had the option to pay $10 million
for Transcience and the secret recipe to own them outright.
That’s $10 million. For genetically-altered brine shrimp.
All of this turned into a crustacean controversy in 2013, when Yolanda sued for breach of contract
and trademark infringement, alleging Big Time had big-time stiffed her on her contractually-obligated
royalty checks. Big Time insisted they now had exclusive rights to the Sea-Monkeys after
making enough payments to cover the purchase price.
But rather than using her husband’s carefully-cultivated Artemia NYOS, they were sourcing the shrimp
from China. Yolanda, meanwhile, claimed she had no income coming in and was forced to
live on her Sea-Monkey-funded estate with no electricity or running water.
The two parties settled out of court in 2017, though the details of the agreement haven’t
been made public. Yolanda continues to sell Sea-Monkey kits online. She also appears to
be planning a documentary detailing her struggles to maintain control of her husband’s shrimp
dynasty. She’s long said she had no idea about his reprehensible views and doesn’t
share them.
We’ll probably never know why Harold Nathan Braunhut, born and raised Jewish, grew into
Harold von Braunhut, who funded anti-Semitic groups and stood up for Hitler. We’ll also
never know why he saw a bucket of fish food and decided it would send him on a path to
success. People, like Sea-Monkeys, can be mysterious creatures. Thanks for watching.
We’ll see you next time.