The Amazing Sea Monkeys Saga

Sea Monkeys are a novelty that have provided hours of quasi-entertainment to young people across the world. They were also created by a man with ties to the Aryan Nations, were at the center of a multimillion dollar legal dispute, and led to a TV show starring Howie Mandel. Not necessarily in that order.
The story of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys is much more than a stroll down memory lane. It’s a look at entrepreneurship, identity, and the good old fashioned pursuit of the almighty dollar. You’ll learn unbelievable true facts about the sordid path the Sea Monkey empire took, and why there’s much more to Sea Monkeys than that little packet of “Instant Life.”
Throwback is a new series from Mental Floss 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.
For even more Sea Monkey facts, check out Erin’s piece on the Mental Floss website, 16 Amazing Facts About Sea Monkeys: www.mentalfloss.com/article/5...
Subscribe here for new Mental Floss episodes every Wednesday: / @mentalfloss
Website: www.mentalfloss.com
Twitter: / mental_floss
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[@doddjustin]

This is truly the "Tiger King" of toy origin stories.

[@gennybaratta2460]

Justin Dodd I was just thinking that

[@Kayworx]

WOW! I volunteer at a local aquarium where I talk to visitors to the aquarium and show them stuff under the microscope, and brine shrimp is one of the most popular items we have at the microscope! You just gave me sooo much new info to tell visitors once the lockdown ends and I can volunteer again!

[@MentalFloss]

Ha- awesome! Even though some parts of the story probably aren't "aquarium tour" material, I'd love to see the faces of families reacting to you casually dropping some of the more outlandish details of this sordid Sea Monkey affair. 😆

[@AgentOracle]

I feel like you can avoid telling the kids about the more, uh, unpleasant bits.

[@jerryvr]

That was the most surreal introduction story to a video I have ever seen :)

[@JoaoPessoa86]

"he didn't discriminate...at least not with comics" oh the shade

[@mikerinn6187]

Great video. Being a kid in the 60s, I ordered Sea Monkeys from the back of a comic book.

[@MentalFloss]

Ha! Did they live up to your expectations?

[@mikerinn6187]

Mental Floss Sure did! I always enjoy your content. And try to patronize the sponsors.

[@Qui-9]

... "Then, it gets weird"... Huh?? It was already weird after the word "funnel". Holy crap I grew up with this and never knew anything about it until now. Isn't learning great? 😄

[@otakuribo]

Even as an insectophobe; I got a lot more enjoyment out of my ant farm than i did from my Sea Monkeys. The colony lived for years, too! I even got kind of fond of them in a "please never escape your clear plastic prison" sort of way

[@mattakudesu]

May need to center your teleprompter a bit. It's a bit strange when you see your eyes dart to the right every few words as if someone is holding a gun offscreen. Otherwise, very interesting video.

[@WizardMills]

I think it’s just too close. Filming at home I bet she has a tablet within arms reach.

[@David-iv6je]

The Sea Monkey KKK Nazi group is actually pointing a gun at her.

[@Apophis324]

You better bring that gentleman owl with you to the actual studio though ^^

[@johnstevenson9956]

Never sign anything without pretending to read the fine print.

[@sarikatimmi]

i forgot sea monkeys were even a thing

[@KPKB55]

Listen guys I get that you find her looking off to the side annoying but she's working from home right now so things aren't gonna be perfect have some patience

[@crystalbreland561]

Love these little guys I have them now.

[@hotsistersue]

Remember pet rocks? What kind of 70s Maui Wowie delusion was that?

[@robspiess]

I loved my pet rock until one day he peed the carpet and I had to put him out to pasture. I think he's still out there in that pasture.

[@TheFinktron]

I never bought the sea monkeys, but I did fall for the add for dinosaur models that you could ride. After I received five balloons imprinted with drawings of T Rex and others, I read the fine print in the comic book add that included the word ”inflatable”.

[@usernameed]

You should do an episode detailing the history of Mental Floss!

[@Zeldarw104]

Wow! Excellent job and very informative, I'm kinda shocked!👀 Yikes, the things you don't know, I must do more research now. 🤔

[@MentalFloss]

Right? I remember reading the first draft of this script and just laughing out loud because of how outlandish some of the details are. I half-expected our fact-checker to mark it all up with Red X'es, but it was pretty much all accurate right out of the gate.

[@europademon]

This is awesome. It's kind of like how I age people without asking their age. I ask if you remember Fraggle Rock or Capital Critters.

[@MentalFloss]

Haha this would be an awesome infographic, just a big line of pop culture ephemera that can carbon date you based on which item makes you say "oh man!!"

[@katherinelynch4193]

This series sounds like fun! And if I can humbly suggest a future topic, I nominate Sky Dancers. They were this insane hybrid of magical girls, the Planeteers, Bella Dancerella, bamboo copters, and upwards of 100 accidents to children that pulled them from the market 6 years after their debut. And to my six-year-old self, they were the coolest damn things on earth.

[@MentalFloss]

This is an amazing suggestion!

[@ScottGladstein]

Awesome. I knew a bit of that but it went off the deep end. Also, this is weird to say but I got distracted by you constantly looking to screen right like you were occasionally reading something

[@nastybedazzler]

Damn that was really interesting. I kinda love this channel lol.

[@burntmarshwigglestudio597]

There was a product called "Monkey in a tea cup" and it was supposedly an actual tiny monkey that would arrive in the mail. Most of the time you got nothing, but Jay Leno on an episode of the tonight show claimed that he ordered one and indeed a tiny monkey arrived. He claimed it leaped out of the box, scurried off the table, and he never saw it again. Now THAT would be an amazing product to track down the history of!

[@GGJ5]

This was a wild ride.

[@JohnPBartonMusic]

I had those when I was a kid in the 70's

[@sussekind9717]

Well, nobody ever said that humans weren't a strange species themselves.

[@MentalFloss]

Ha! Very true. Somehow the 3-eyed, whisker-chinned self-fertilizers come across as the 2nd weirdest species in this story.

[@sussekind9717]

@@MentalFloss That is hilariously funny!🤪😊

[@linphillips8331]

I ordered Sea Monkeys from the back of an Archie's comic book when I was a kid in the 70s. My parents weren't usually very indulgent, but maybe they were curious in this case. Well anyway, they were a rip-off, of course. It's funny when you're a kid, when you see something and then all of a sudden you want it *SO BAD* that you can't live without it. 😄

[@scottdoesntmatter4409]

Sea Monkeys are NOT a rip off. I've had them for a long time now.

[@oklahomorose]

My sister and I (we were 70's kids) tried Sea Monkeys once. Apparently we got a bum batch because after we set up the tank and added the "eggs" nothing happened.

[@linphillips8331]

Same here, except we thought we could see little moving specks in the water, but then they all apparently died. I accused my little brother of sneezing on them (the instructions specifically said not to sneeze on them). As an adult in the freshwater aquarium hobby, I bought and cultivated brine shrimp to feed baby angelfish, and was a lot more successful.

[@HHernandez93]

We need the next video to be about the pet rock!

[@poppasmurf4115]

hmmm...i was a precocious kid with educated parents (born in 1956, so had great childhood). i already had a microscope at age 6 or 7, and my dad bought me some (sea monkeys) brine shrimp so i could document their life cycle...i guess my experience was different than most bte, we were sorta lower middle class, but education was, like, super important. i was doing algebra in the 4th grade, for example..

[@claysoggyfries]

Almost as bad as turning a rock into a pet

[@jamesrussell3436]

Anyone else go mad with the constant side eye when reading the script 😂

[@hobogreen3750]

now this sounds like something i can get behind

[@dragonstudiowilliams8221]

I had them in 90s I was bout 5 now 32 I have them again

[@spiritusmundi70]

Do one on stretch Armstrong.

[@ashleyb7139]

I had sea monkeys in the late 90s. I even spent extra money on the necklace so I could bring them to school w me. My cousin had some as well. All but 3 died & they ended up HUGE for brine shrimp....probably about half an inch each. I didnt think it was possible lol I have a photo of them somewhere...Both of ours definitely lived more than a few days. Mine probably lasted about 6 months (even putting them in the necklace & bringing them to school) & my cousin's lasted closer to a year 🤷🏼‍♀️

[@TiagoSeiler]

Guys, a teleprompter is so cheap, it's so distracting watching Erin just read the script waaaay off camera.

[@kotik5762]

... oh THEN things got weird okay cool

[@kurobara05]

Furbies. Just.... Furbies.

[@JosephBrown83805]

Sea Monkeys were still a 'thing' in the late 60s, I would have been 10 to 12 years old and yes I had them for a time. My mom thought they were insects. I never heard of any of the accessories you talked about for the "monkeys" though.

[@LeoElso]

Sea Monkeys seem like such an American phenomenon, I only heard about them in the song by Lemon Demon, "Dead Sea Monkeys". I thought at first it was a nonsensical song about mail order aquatic chimps. Great to discover the actual story behind these.

[@ChesuMori]

It's weird how your brain associates things... when I first heard the crazy, convoluted story behind sea monkeys, I was playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, so now there's a permanent association between the two in my mind.

[@sjselby95]

A lot of early 2000s songs remind me of video games I was playing when the song was on the radio a bunch

[@MentalFloss]

Skateboarding = Summertime (Doin' Time) by Sublime.

[@updownstate]

I scrimped and saved and picked up pennies off the sidewalk until I had enough to order these. My mother sent the first pkg back bc it held the sea monkeys and there was nothing to put them in. I cried and cried.

[@MentalFloss]

Noo! Put 'em in a glass, mom! (But also: I guess yay? Knowing who was profiting off the product?)

[@updownstate]

@@MentalFloss It killed my mother to spend a cent. So a dollar for something you couldn't eat must have hurt her soul. She used to save a penny by buying a block of margarine and cutting it herself. Of course I never got my dollar back.

[@user-ye9bc7nw2c]

@@updownstate lol

[@scottdoesntmatter4409]

@@updownstate Your mother sounds like a terrible parent.

[@TearyEyesAnderson]

They made for interesting scientific pets, but sadly the histor of the man who made them famous, and the product name made them almost instantly hated by anyone who wanted something 'nice' to share with their children. The company that made a few Sea Monkeys toys, in the early 1990, also made other science toys like the Beakman's World products.

[@mauricerosser-hendrix1158]

Just listen to a podcast about this on stuff you forgot in history class

[@cretebuzz1273]

How about an episode on Fuzzy Wuzzy Bear Soap?!

[@ericwoytasek269]

They eventually found a way to cut costs. By canceling the show. Yep! That would do it!

[@ronalddavies1091]

Imo the show has promise. I have a suggestion that whatever the host is reading from be moved to in front of the camera. Her constant looking to the side was a distraction for me.

[@MentalFloss]

Thanks! We're still scrambling a bit to adjust to the new shelter-in-place reality, but we should have a teleprompter set up at Erin's house by the time we film the next episode. 👀

[@robspiess]

​@@MentalFloss Then you can use the teleprompter to look people in the eyes during video conference calls!

[@minecratsilentbuild5720]

could you do an episode about pogs or heroclix

[@Todesnuss]

"Braunhut" is already a perfectly germanic name considering it's german. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if there's an actual town called Braunhut that one could be 'von'.

[@conservative599]

Yes, and he was a race/rally car driver in Germany and emigrated when I am not sure. Knew him growing up as my Dad, Henri LaMothe Highest Shallow Diver was his artist and packaging illustrator See my larger comment above, filling in what I knew from the 60's and 70's. Also Harold convinced my Dad to take the High Dive professional as a separate act from any water swimming/diving shows.

[@hebneh]

Well, that was peculiar. Reminds me of how the second-in-command of the American Nazi party in the 1960s was Jewish in reality. A reporter contacted him and informed him he was going to be outed in a newspaper article soon, so he killed himself before it got printed. The Sea Monkey guy managed to escape that fate.

[@johngreene0129]

Interesting. Please lose the annoying background music.

[@phosphorus4]

The intro and stuff…a lot like The Create Unknown…

[@scallywag1716]

Annoying they put "premiere" in my subscriptions. Just post it when ready dammit...

[@Zeldarw104]

Not only are you a scallywag, you're also dastardly, lily-livered, knave, why are you upset with her?🤨

[@scallywag1716]

@@Zeldarw104 not HER... it is the channels that set a "premiere" date and time like you are actually going to miss out on something if you don't watch it at exactly the date and time it is scheduled to post. It presents a problem for persons like me who add videos to "watch later" section of my youtube. A premiere video won't play and thus stalls the entire watch later cycle of videos. I just don't see the need to have a premiere notice for videos...it is lame and only serves persons who have the attention span of a gnat.

[@Pir-o]

She needs to work on how she reads her notes or how they edit those videos. Looking to the side every 3s is very distracting

[@drdollars77]

Yes. And her eyebrows moving under her fringe was distracting me as well. I had to pretend it was a podcast to get through the video

[@trevorseidl5858]

I can see her reading from a list

[@rafaelcisneros562]

Liz Phair and the Pixies, (Whoever they are) No mention of the Bloodhound Gang?

[@BURDYMAN777]

I feel very uneasy when your face is "looking" at the camera,at me, but your eyes are looking past me. Its just kinda weird.

[@robynobrien9446]

" Super stuff " 1960's version of Slime ? Enjoy the search.........peace.........

[@shellbacksclub]

is she just reading an article?

[@ChadwickTheChad]

As a conservative, he had an uncharacteristic level of intelligence.

[@wolfsettgast4945]

How inane

[@TheLHROCKS]

im really sorry to point this out, but you have something in your teeth. and i kind of allready saw a version of this, but i like yours it more detailed. =D

[@shellbacksclub]

i once slept with my container of Sea Monkeys & woke up with Crabs!😕

[@caryrodda]

Wow, I had no idea the Sea Monkeys inventor was a white power dude. Glad I never bought any of his products.

[@shellbacksclub]

sounds more like a German.

[@KnaveMurdok]

can we start calling white supremacists/white nationalists etc. "Sea Monkeys" from now on??? XD XD XD

[@AmberWool]

Erin, please get rid of thst black spot between your two front teeth. Thanks in advance.

[@doctorkazoo]

Please please please somebody take the internet away from the millennials and Generation Z!! They are so annoying!

[@gregbalster522]

Always enjoy this show, but WHY the Close-Ups on this strange looking woman's disturbing face and wig ? Gross. Could not watch. It is a visual show. Find a host with... anything but this clown freak show. Please ! Or zoom way back ! ?

[@zompired2998]

What's your problem? There's absolutely no excuse to say such horrible things.