Gregory Bevington, at the time art director of ExploraToy, described the Sea-Monkeys’ old aesthetic to the Los Angeles Times as “naked people with webbed tails and feet and hands and three prongs sticking out of their heads. In 1999, Educational Insights-the company that owned ExploraToy, which marketed Sea-Monkeys-attempted to revamp the critters’ look. “I think kids are pretty clever at making things work or finding ways to have fun, even with something that may disappoint them because they’re not exactly what they appeared.” “The sea monkeys weren’t all that kids were led to believe from the marketing,” Hogan said. Hans Hillewaert, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY SA-4.0 Von Braunhut hired comic book artist Joe Orlando-who would later go on to become vice president of DC Comics and associate publisher of MAD magazine-to draw the 1950s-esque humanoid creatures, which actually look like this: The naked, pot-bellied humanoid creatures with crown-like head ornaments don’t resemble actual brine shrimp at all. Sea-Monkeys don’t really look like the creatures on the packaging. The sea part is obviously because they’re a water animal-though not of the ocean.” As Tim Walsh notes in his book, Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them, “if this was marine biology these facts would matter, but this was marketing!” In 1964, the product lost the Instant Life name in favor of Sea-Monkeys. According to Hogan, “He called them sea-monkeys because they have a tail that looks like a monkey’s tail. Though they weren’t marketed that way, von Braunhut did call the brine shrimp sea-monkeys (and “exotic Saskatchewan Brine Shrimp”) in his ads. You had to provide your own goldfish bowl.” 4. “What you got was the packets of the shrimp and then the little packets of nutrients and the food the shrimp would eat,” Hogan said. When he began selling his shrimp in 1960s, von Braunhut marketed them under the name “Instant Life.” The kit sold for just 49 cents. They weren’t initially marketed as Sea-Monkeys.

I’ve never seen anything that specifically said why Harold Von Braunhut was particularly hellbent on selling brine shrimp to kids, but it’s a good way to make a buck.” 3. “There was this kind of idea that you could sell science to kids or sell them lifeforms that would entertain them from which they could learn about nature. “This was also around the time of Uncle Milton and his ant farms,” Hogan said. Another popular toy might have been an inspiration, too.Īccording to Hogan, von Braunhut may also have been inspired by another popular product that hit the market the year before he got the idea for Sea-Monkeys. What could be more remarkable than that? … I was always interested in wildlife, and I was looking for something that would interest other people in it.” 2. “I thought, if you could take a package of powder and put it in water and see it come to life. “People say, ‘What gave you the idea for Sea-Monkeys?’” von Braunhut, who held about 200 patents, said in an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1997. Von Braunhut, with the help of marine biologist and microcrustacean expert Anthony D'Agostino, figured out a way to treat tap water with a mix of nutrients (von Braunhut called them “magic crystals” and mixed them in a barn on his property) that would revive the shrimp in a tank at home. While in this state-also known as cryptobiosis-the animals are in a protective cyst-like casing until water is added. “These shrimp live in salt lakes or salt flats, and when the water of a salt lake evaporates, the shrimp go into this state of suspended animation,” Patricia Hogan, a curator at the Strong National Museum of Play, told Mental Floss in 2014. In 1957, Harold von Braunhut became fascinated with a species of brine shrimp, Artemia salina, that he saw being sold as pet food in a pet store. Courtesy the Strong National Museum of Play. Trade publication ad for Sea-Monkeys, 1972.

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