Stuff You Should Know - Selects: The Strange Story of Sea Monkeys

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

Anyone who ever picked up a comic book as a kid probably marveled at the ads for the mysterious Sea Monkeys. In reality, they are just brine shrimp, not fantastical beings with magical powers. But the story behind the invention of the Sea Monkey is tale all its own. Listen in to this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey everybody, it's Josh and for this week's Select I've chosen our episode on Sea Monkeys that came out in March of 2018. Sea Monkeys are one of those things that you just take for granted when you're a kid. There's that one ad that was in every single issue of every single comic book and for those of us lucky enough to mail off to get them, they became an even bigger part of your childhood when you got to watch them swim around in their cool little plastic tank. But Sea Monkeys have an even more amazing backstory than this, not just of toy fame, but also of intrigue too.

Hope you enjoy it! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. We are swimmingly excited about this one because it is about sea monkeys. Jerry, is mama mama sea monkey? Yeah, she's got her little blonde bob hairdo going on.

And I guess we're baby sea monkeys. I guess. Yeah, that's cool. We'll let the dad not exist. Okay? We're brothers. That's right. I think that's a good move. With a non-existent father, which really explains a lot about us. A non-existent sea monkey father, no less.

So Chuck, I realized that I don't know something about you, which is weird because we've been doing this for almost 10 years. And we're sea monkey brothers. We are. We know a lot about one another. We know one another's smells, looks, scowls, all sorts of stuff, right? Triumphs, victories. One thing I don't know about you is whether you were into comic books as a kid. Well, glad you asked. I feel like we've talked about this at some point, but maybe not.

I, yeah, we have for sure. Okay. Because remember I read Archie and Richie Rich. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wasn't, well here's a couple of things. I read Archie and Richie Rich growing up and didn't get into the superhero comics much because I don't know why. But then also, you don't know this part, we used to go to visit my grandmother on my father's side. And she was big time into Thor? Granny Thor.

She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was, I had sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV who lived in a condo. Oh, nice, yeah. And then old school granny who lived in a house in the country. And so Granny Bryant didn't have TV or anything like that. But what she did have in the back room was a bunch of my dad and Uncle Ed's old toys and comic books from when they were kids. So I think they were mainly Uncle Eddie. So I got, I had a big stack of comics from I guess the 1960s that were like Man from Uncle. I'm trying to think of a few more. No superhero stuff, but just those weird

sort of, I guess it wasn't weird, but Man Man from Unclos is the only one I can remember. But... It's a little weird. Long story short is, because that's all the entertainment we had to ingest, we would, my brother and I would go back there and read those every year for years. That's pretty awesome. The same comics. So you made your way through that stack multiple times?

Oh, many, many times. Gotcha. Like, I remember the ads. I remember everything about them. So then you remember, obviously, I think you probably knew where I was going with this from the outset, you remember the ads for the sea monkeys then? I remember sea monkeys. I remember X-ray specs, which we'll get into. And I remember for sure all the ads for, like, can you draw this parrot or pirate? Oh yeah.

Remember that? For the art school. Yeah, what was that? I think they just took your money and then sent you a degree for your art school. Is that what it was? I'm pretty sure. Ugh, so disappointing. Yeah, but the turtle was pretty cool.

He had like a Newsy camp on and a turtleneck and he just looked like he was ready to Get mellow, you know, yeah. Oh, you know the other one too was the Charles Atlas workout thing. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah where the 98 pound weak link is sand kicked in his face Yeah, that's really playing on some 15 year olds insecurities and it worked. Oh, yeah for sure sure. What about you? I some 15 year olds insecurities and it worked. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. What about you? I remember Sea Monkeys, there's one that always stuck out

to me was a bonkers ad from the 80s. This would have been way past your man from uncle era comic books. But I think I've asked you before, if you'd ever had bonkers, they're like these fruit chews. They were like just the superior starburst. And there was a comic book ad in there with like this, like kind of crotchety old lady in it.

And I don't even remember the gist of it. I think maybe she was mad that the kid was eating bonkers and enjoying it. I don't know. But I'll never forget that comic for some reason because the colors in it were just perfect. And they struck my brain just right. So I've always got that bonkers comic book ad in there too. And a lot of bubble-yum comic book ads

are stuck in there as well. Nothing that means anything really and certainly nothing pertinent to this episode except for that sea monkey's ad. Yeah, but you and I were also into Mad Magazine big time which I believe was ad free, wasn't it? It was. They had like those fake ads.

Oh yeah, of course. Which were pretty hilarious. Satirical ads. Sure. But no, I don't think they had any like actual ads in them. They were just strictly subscription-based. That's right. So, in that Sea Monkeys ad, if you'll remember correctly, and I think for many decades it was virtually the same thing.

Yeah. It was this kind of group, this tribe of humanoid figures. It was a family. It was a family. But exactly what kind of family they were is really up for debate. So they were kind of lanky, like stringy, ropey arms and legs, paunchy tummies. Yeah.

Naked is the day they were born. Sure. legs, ponchy tummies. Yeah. Naked is the day they were born. Sure. Webbed feet, webbed tails, like the end of their tail was like webbed, which if you look closely, I think was probably just a device to cover dad's junk in the illustration. They're like, we need something on the end of their tail there, buddy. And this is like this classic illustration of the sea monkeys that apparently was done

by this guy named Joe Orlando. Mad Magazine. Yeah, he's from Mad Magazine. Creepy Magazine is another one. He ran some comic lines at DC Comics for a while. He's kind of a legend. But he's also extremely well known outside of the comic world for having drawn that sea monkey family.

Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at it right now. Look at that. It's like unchanged. I know. And what's great too is if we'll talk about later, somebody, some people went in and fiddled around with it. And if you look now, if you go to buy the sea monkeys now, they're basically back to

the way they were before. Well, yeah. And we'll get to that too. You also did mention the castle, which is kind of key because somehow they have these little crown-like heads and I guess were kings of the bowl. I guess. They were, yeah, they were a royal sea monkey family. Kings of the fish bowl and only inhabitants actually.

So if you, right, so you could proclaim yourself the Royal Family. You mean I've done that at our house. So if you look closely at some of those ads, they say, there's like a little fine print that says these are caricatures of sea monkeys. It's not actually what your sea monkeys look like. Or it's an artist's interpretation or something like that. And it turns out that sea monkeys, and just prepare for your childhood to blow away like so much dust in the wind chuck, sea monkeys don't actually exist. There's no such thing.

Yeah. Did you know that already? Well, of course. Well, sea monkeys, as sea monkeys, don't exist, but they are real little living creatures that you buy and have shipped in an envelope back in those days, in an envelope to your home. And they are actually their own thing. So what they are ultimately is something called Artemia or Brian Shrimp. Yes.

But the guy who ended up calling them sea monkeys was actually well within his right to call them something different than just Brian Shrimp because they're a hybrid version of Brian Shrimp. The guy who invented sea monkeys actually tinkered along with a micro crustaceans expert named DiAgostino, I can't remember his first name. I think when you have a name like dagestino Uh-huh, you can just go by that so so dagestino and this guy named Harold von Broughton or brought

braunhardt, right They got together and they actually took Brian shrimp and made them into something, a hybrid version that we now know and love as sea monkeys. Yeah, so the literal sea monkeys that you buy don't exist in nature. Right. They are a man-made creation. I don't think we can get that through clearly enough because it's pretty, scientifically it's pretty amazing. And they did that because they couldn't find any of these brine shrimp varieties that would live through the shipping process and be able to be essentially rehydrated and brought to life to the delight of children. So they made them.

Right. And it worked. There was no clapping and squealing with original brine shrimp, right? No. So through these cross-breeding programs, they made brine shrimp. Brine shrimp were already, I think you can still go to pet stores and buy them. They're a type of food. They're a pet food. Yeah.

And they're just like tiny little micro crustaceans, and they enter into what's called cryptobiosis. And they're basically, if you'll remember our Tardigrade episode, they basically do the same thing that Tardigrades do. They enter into the state of suspended animation, a desiccated state where they're just dried out and just sitting there waiting for the conditions to be right to basically come back to life.

That's what sea monkeys are. out and just sit in there waiting for the conditions to be right to basically come back to life. That's what sea monkeys are. Matthew Feeney Yeah. So you get this little package. They're basically, they're brine shrimp eggs is what it is or what they are. And then you get purified water, put them in there. And I believe there's a growth formula as well, right? Matthew Feeney Yeah, that's like their food.

It's like spirulina and yeast, I believe. Matthew Feeney Right. Yeah, that's like their food. It's like spirulina and yeast, I believe. Right, but it's, no one truly knows what the exact formulation for all this stuff is, because it is locked in a vault in Manhattan, because it was the only one that worked, and it was owned by this Van Broughton character. Van Broughton? Braunhut. Braunhut. I don't know, it's a tough word, a tough name to say. I've seen it a hundred times in the last like eight hours, but still. Yeah. So until he died in 2003, Harold von Braunhut and his wife Yolanda were the only two people on the planet who knew what the special formula was that created those conditions. Because remember, you've got sea monkeys, little brine shrimp, that are in the state of cryptobiosis,

this dried out, desiccated state. And when you put them just into regular tap water, they don't necessarily come to life. There's something in that powder that alters the pH and the salinity and makes it just perfect for them to emerge from this cryptobiosis almost instantaneously. In fact, early on, the sea monkeys were originally just called Instant Life, I believe, is what they named

their original market under. Not the best name. No. And it's weird that that name was chosen because it turns out that Harold von Braunhut was a marketing genius. He wrote the original 32-page booklet that I believe still comes with the sets, is that right? I couldn't find evidence of that and I was looking online to find a transcription of it and was very surprised to find no one's done that. Like you would think there'd be entire fan sites that this is like their Bible, you know,

the original version of it, would have later editions of it. Couldn't find it anywhere. Matthew Feeney Well, I don't know if it still comes with it, but for many, many, many years and even after his death, that original prose was, which told this fantastical story. I mean, that's the whole point. It wasn't just like, add water and you're all set. It told the whole story of sea monkeys. Yeah. It said things like, your sea monkeys can be hypnotized. You can train them to play baseball. You can race them. They love to race. All sorts of things. You can race them. They're like, they love to race. There's all sorts of things.

You can basically train them into a pack of friendly seals, I think is the way they put it. It talked about like their courtship and reproduction and just all sorts of stuff. Like it was, yeah, this guy's just basically, do you remember that treatment that George Lucas wrote about Wookiees and Chewbacca's planet that got turned into the Star Wars Christmas special.

This is the exact same thing, but this is the Sea Monkeys world. Right. I was about to say I'd like to see the Sea Monkeys TV show, but I did. What did you think? Did you watch any of it? Yeah, I did. Yeah, so there was a TV show in the 80s starring Howie Mandel. Yeah. It just really doesn't get any better. Like, who else would have been better than Howie

Mandel for that? It was Howie Mandel. He produced it as well, along with the Chiodo Brothers, who were known for making killer clowns from outer space. Yeah. So you know what you're going to get there. It is the definition of camp.

Like, they watch Pee-wees play a house and they're like, this is kind of campy, but let's increase it by 35%. And that's what they did. It was not long for this world though, right? No, and the thing is, I don't know if we've gotten this across, it was live action. Oh, yeah, right. It wasn't a cartoon. That's what made it so not just campy, that made it unsettling as well. Like the actors were all done up as like sea monkeys and it was four kids, but it was obviously made by adults with a wink and a nod to other adults.

It was a weird, weird, weird show. Yeah, it was, I didn't see it in, I only watched like a bit of one episode. I didn't see enough to judge the whole 11, I think, episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and Marty Croft without the LSD. Right. It was with PCP instead. That's how it struck me. I was like, these people are on angel dust. Yeah. But all this to say that it was and continues to be a big selling item. Like, kids loved sea monkeys.

They bought them. And I mean, from what I can tell, when kids bought sea monkeys, they didn't care that they didn't look like those things. And they were just thought it was cool that something they got in the mail really did come to life. Yeah, for sure. And you could raise them. And after some tinkering, Von Braunhut managed to get them to live for a while. So these were like pets to the kids.

Plus I also think Chuck, I suspect, and this is a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success, Von Braunhut, when he started to market these things early on, he was following immediately in the wake of something called instant fish that I think Wham-O had tried to market and had failed terribly at. And he was going around trying to market something similar and toy stores and retailers were like, we don't want anything to do with those.

People almost lost their jobs over that Instant Fish stuff. Get out of here. So Von Braunhut in a stroke of genius said, you know what? I'm going to go right to the source. So he started marketing directly to kids. He started hanging out at elementary school parking lots. He did. And he'd be like, here kid, come look at my minivan.

I've got a bunch of stuff for you to choose from, right? Yeah, well the comic book thing was a stroke of genius. How many, like three, three and a half million ads a year? Was that it? Or pages? 303 million pages. Oh wow. A year. And now, so most of those were two page inserts.

So that's 150 issues of, 150 million issues of comic books a year. I wonder how expensive that was. I don't know. I'm quite sure he got some deals over the years because he started that marketing push in 1964. And I don't know exactly when it stopped, but it was well into the 90s that there were Sea Monkey ads

and comic books still that were virtually the same as ever. Did you ever buy any of that stuff? I had a friend who had Sea Monkeys. I never did myself. Oh, but that was a point that I was getting away from, that I wanted to make. I think one of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was because it wasn't just that these things were pets or whatever. You ordered them yourself.

Like you handled this transaction yourself. And you got to show your friends something that you purchased. Like your parents didn't take you to the store or anything like that. You contracted with this strange man to buy these brine shrimp from him, and they arrived and you followed the instructions, and now they're floating around. Well, you probably got mom or dad to cut you a 49-cent check, or have them cut a check,

or you maybe got the funds from your lemonade stand and converted that to a cash bond. A bearer bond. I don't know what any of that stuff is. But yeah, so you probably had a little assistance from Mom and Dad or maybe you put a dollar in an envelope. I'll bet many kids did. I wonder if Braunhut sent the change back, or was like, I'm keeping this change kid.

Just to teach you a lesson not to send a dollar bill in the mail anymore. Yeah, because you can't send change in the mail, right? Right. So, I mean, suffice to say, sea monkeys were and are just like one of the classic toys of all time. Largely because of the way they were marketed, right? Well, yeah, and Von Braunhut, this was not his only jam. He had close to 200 patents on everything. Like we mentioned the X-ray specs and that great, great ad of the guy looking at his hand or the sexist, misogynistic ad of him leering at a woman in a dress. Right.

And x-ray specs were very disappointing when you got those because they were, it was two pieces of cardboard with little pinholes that you look through and in between the cardboard where that pinhole is is a feather. Right. And so what it did was it basically projected two overlapping images of the same thing. So the edges around the outside of it were just kind of fuzzier than the middle. Basically, yeah. Supposedly that was what an x-ray of your hand looked like.

Yeah, so that's a case of fraud. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Or what about the invisible goldfish? That was another one is. That is, that's so fraudulent that it's just beautiful. It's elegant and it's fraudulent. Well, but it's almost not fraudulent because here was the deal. He sold what was called invisible goldfish, which basically means nothing.

He sold nothing successfully. Right. It was a, the kit came with the fish bowl, fish food, and instructions, and that was it. And there was a guarantee that you would never see your invisible fish, because they would remain invisible. Yeah, and that was, I think that is the distinction that makes it not fraud. Right. Is he basically said, you're not going to see anything in this bowl. Yeah, and that was that. What else did he do?

He invented Balderdash. Oh, that's right. He also invented those doll's eyes where you lay your doll back and it's eyes closed. He invented those. Yeah, he invented that technology, which was a game changer for creepy baby dolls. He also, even before his days of inventing, he was an interesting guy basically his whole life.

He raced motorcycles and cars under the name The Green Hornet. He was a talent manager for a couple of people. One was a mentalist. Yeah, talent manager like Broadway Danny Rose was a talent manager. Okay. I don't know who that is, but I'm going to go along with it. What is that? What's that from? The name's familiar, but I don't know who it is.

It was a Woody Allen movie where he played, it was a talent manager that managed like, you know, people like this, the high divers that would dive into shallow pools and mentalists. And this guy was even a, wasn't he a mentalist for a little while? I didn't see that. I wouldn't be at all surprised. Yeah, I think he did a little work as the great something. Did you see, well, he managed a guy named the great Danager.

I didn't get whether that was him or not, though it could have been. No, no, no, that was him and he had his own act for a little while. Oh, gotcha, okay. Did you see the guy who, the high dive guy, did you see his jump? No. Oh my, okay.

There's a guy named Henri Lamothe, I believe. Yeah. He, yeah, Henri Lamothe, if you go look him up, H-E-N-R-I-L-A-M-O-T-H-E, you're going to be treated to an AP video that was shot in the early 70s from the looks of it, where he's opening up for an evil, Knievel act in a parking lot in God knows where in New Jersey.

And he climbs up this ladder, a 40 foot ladder, and below, beneath, is one of these tiny little kiddie pools filled with like 18 inches of water. And this guy who is clearly in his mid-70s, maybe older, dives 40 feet into 18 inches of water in a kiddie pool, belly first, he does basically a belly flop, and immediately stands up with like, ta-da! It's one of the most amazing things

I've ever seen in my life. And this guy, Harold Von Braunhut, managed that guy back in the day. Yeah, okay. He was a magician who worked under the name The Great Telepo. That's a pretty good name. And he also invented something called the Direct-O-Mat, which was this device where you punch in your destination in New York, like you're which was this device where you punch in your destination, like you're in New York City, you punch in your destination and the machine told you the fastest subway route.

Oh, that's smart. It was Google Maps. That's very smart. Like 50 years early. But using like punch cards instead of, you know, real technology. Basically, but I mean the guy, you know, not only was he a marketing genius, he had a real knack for inventing some successful useful things. So he had this other thing that you could get for like $59.95.

And it was actually a weapon so much so that he was stopped at LaGuardia Airport in 1979 and arrested because he had a briefcase of samples of this stuff that he was selling, I think, through mail order. And it was called the, what is it, Koyoga Agent M5? Yeah, the Koyoga Agent M5, it's basically a telescoping metal whip. You know, you've seen the telescoping batons and things that cops can use, I guess. Sure. Or I guess cops can use I guess Anybody can use them and do actually had one of those for a little while for some reason. Did you really I did? I thought you know what? I'm not a gun guy, but I thought I'll put this thing in the floorboard of my car

Sure, and if anyone ever Reaches their hand in the window, then they're gonna get a wrapped knuckle That's funny. I don't know where it went though. It didn't telescope properly, so I was like, that's probably not good. No, it's not because you, I mean, that's not what you want. Plus you have to practice with that kind of thing. That's a big commitment. You're just turning and running is way better.

Well, yeah, I just, I went back to plan A, which is poop my pants and cry. Right. Hopefully that works. No one wants to punch a guy who's just pooped his pants, you know? All right. So the, not in the butt at least. So this M5 telescoping whip, this is where things get weird. And we'll set this up right before the ad break because it turns out that Mr. von Brohut

was perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist Aryan Nazi? Sure. Is that fair to say? I think so. All right. And we'll get to that right after this. In July 1881, a man walked into a train station, pulled out a gun and shot the president of the United States. James Garfield's assassination horrified the American people, and they wanted his killer, Charles Guiteau, punished.

But Guiteau, many experts believed, was insane. What had seemed like a black and white case was now much grayer. Could the justice system truly deliver justice in a situation like this? Guiteau's trial was extraordinary, but not unique. Important trials have always raised questions and made us reflect on the world we live in. I'm Mira Hayward, and I'm exploring the stories of these trials in my new podcast, History on Trial.

Every episode will cover a different trial from American history and reveal how the legal battles of the past have shaped our present Listen and subscribe to history on trial now on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Stop your shredding. Okay, Chuck, I'm sure everybody just bit the tips of their fingers off waiting for those ads to finish so we could get back to it. Is it fair to call him a Nazi? So here's the thing. It has been so thoroughly documented by legitimate sources like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times. His own mouth.

Yes, his own mouth. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League, I believe. I don't know if the Southern Poverty Law Center actually tracked him or not, but this guy has definitely been identified as somebody who was a long, was a long time contributor to white nationalist groups, specifically the Aryan nations out of Idaho, which was one of the original white hate groups in the United States.

That's right. Here's the problem with that. This is the guy who invented sea monkeys. The problem number two is that if you ever sent your money This is the guy who invented sea monkeys. Problem number two is that if you ever sent your money off to buy some sea monkeys, some of that money had a very good chance of having been turned around and given to the Aryan nation. And herein lies a real moral conundrum for a lot of people, understandably so.

Yeah. So, well, I didn't see, did he just give money, period? Yes, but the people are saying, I gave you some of that money for sea monkeys, who knows what dimes and nickels that I gave you went to Arian Nation. I don't want any money going to Arian Nation. So I feel horrible that my money went to you, which you in turn gave to the Arian Nation.

Right, however, this M5 was, there was a man named Richard Butler. This guy was a real piece of human garbage. He was the founder of the Aryan nation. Yeah, he was the worst. He's not with us anymore, thankfully, but he was a very bad man. And he was brought up on trial and basically this M5, a little

telescoping whip that was invented by Von Braunhut, that was specifically used, that product and proceeds from that specifically went to a fund to help out Richard Butler. Like we know that for sure. Yeah. Everything's going along for Harold von Braunhut pretty swimmingly until the late 80s, right? In the late 80s, Richard Butler is brought up along with I think 14 or 15 other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges, basically trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, trying to start a race war.

They had some serious charges against them. They were eventually acquitted of these charges. But as part of this defense fund, in the Aryan Nation newsletter, Richard Butler talks about the Koyoga Agent M5 as a great tool for every Aryan nationalist to have, a great weapon and defense mechanism. And if you order this thing on the order form,

write the letters A-N for Aryan nation. And the inventor of this product has pledged that 25 of those $60 will be given to my defense fund. So now all of a sudden, for the first time ever, the guy who invented Sea Monkeys is tied to the guy who founded the Arian Nation hate group. Yeah, and this was just like the beginning

of the can of worms, which he did not invent the can of worms, but he should have. It was the beginning of the can of worms, which he did not invent the can of worms, but he should have. It was the beginning of that being opened because, like you said, late 80s, what was it, 88 I think, and the Washington Post basically got a hold of the story, did some investigating, and found that he was involved in, quote, some of the most extreme racist and anti-Semitic organizations in the country.

But here's the deal. There are quotes from his mouth that say things about inscrutable slanty Korean eyes when dealing with Korean shop owners and talking about Jews and black people, like literal quotes. Yet, when he's finally contacted, this great article that we kind of started with was when he was still alive, he would deny that this was him. But not try and clear it up or anything, basically just say that's a bunch of bunk.

There were newsletters written for an organization called the National Anti-Zionist Institute, written by one Hendrik von Braun, but the return address was the same PO box that you sent off to get Sea Monkeys. Yeah, Sea Monkey like paraphernalia. Still today, same address. So it's not very, yeah, it's in Maryland, which is where he lived. Right. So he wasn't like covering his tracks very well at all. So he, so all that started, that Washington Post expose specifically also, came out of a property dispute.

He later claimed that all of these were lies and that they were drummed up by somebody who was in a property dispute with, I think there was a developer who was encroaching on his land and he was suing them. And I think he said that the developer had brought all this up. The thing is, whether the developer exposed it or not, or tipped the Washington Post off to this or not, this is already pretty well known in the toy industry.

Supposedly, yeah. And pretty well documented. It wasn't just that this Harold von Braunhut gave money to the Aryan nation. Like he would go to their annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself. He would speak at some of their conferences and apparently not very well received. I thought that's pretty funny that he wasn't like the best speaker. No, he would kind of go off on topics that the Aryans weren't particularly interested in, like numerology or the pyramids or how it all tied together.

But the thing is he had a lot of money and he was apparently quite willing to give it. Now no one has, we have to say, no one has ever documented a penny that was given to the Aryan nation. The closest thing to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler saying that the inventor of this has pledged $25 per. But the very fact that he was basically allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself

strongly suggests that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and legal defense fund pledges and apparently a former spokesman for the Aryan Nation who is now a reformed racist he says spoke out about Harold von Braunhut and said he didn't know exactly how much he gave but he gave a lot and he gave pretty frequently when he was asked. Right. So, things get a little weirder here because it turns out that von Braunhut was actually Jewish.

He was born to Jeanette Cohen and Edward Braunhut, not von Braunhut, out of that little von to, I guess, Germanize him. I guess so. And he was born in New York City on March 31st, 1926 as Harold Nathan Braunhut. And if you know anything about Aryan nations or any of those groups, they don't take kindly to a Jewish guy, even if he's like, rebukes that to being a member. But like you said, he had a lot of dough and that's basically why everyone thinks they allowed him to stay on as a member.

Yeah. So, the 1988 Washington Post article did a couple of things. One, it outed the inventor of sea monkeys as an Aryan white supremacist, or I should say just a white supremacist. He was an Aryan. It also outed him as a non-Aryan, as a Jewish person. Born Jewish to Jewish parents, about as Jewish as you can possibly get,

aside from being a practicing Jew, right? So he was outed in this Washington Post article like two times over. So everybody was mad at him from either side, right? The thing is, it's like even after, I guess the Aryan nation released a press release about this saying that they were disappointed to find out this guy that they were friends with

was actually Jewish, but he was not kicked out of their circle. He stayed apparently as as attracted as he was not kicked out of their circle. He stayed apparently as, as intracted as he was before and still was always a part of the organization's conferences and stuff like that. Yeah. And he, it wasn't just the Aryan nations. He in 1985, the Washington Post says that US attorney Thomas Bauer, there was a weapons case in 1985 against a member of the Klan, Grand Dragon Dale Roche.

Yeah, it was in 1980 I think that the transaction happened. Okay, but the weapons case was in 1985. And Van Braunhut basically loaned the guy $12,000 so he could buy more than 80 firearms. Like, here, go buy a bunch of guns. Matthew Feeney-Spanish Well, okay, yes. And this is a grand wizard of the Klan, I believe, right? Matthew Feeney-Spanish Yes. Matthew Feeney-Spanish So, the reason I pointed out that it happened

in 1980, the year before the Washington Post had drummed up in that 1988 article, the year before he had paid like $1,300 for his parents' graves in a Jewish cemetery to be kept up in perpetuity. So this is like, this is this weird dual life this guy is living, like born and raised Jewish, respecting his Jewish parents' funeral wishes and burial wishes, and then months later, helping a grand wizard of the KKK buy 83 firearms, and then taking possession of the firearms himself until the

loan was paid back. It's crazy. It is a little crazy. It's quite surprising, actually, too. I mean, that's like a big one-two punch, you know? Yeah, so he didn't actually, he would do licensing deals over the years. That's how he ran his business. Probably smartly to do that, if you ask me.

But over the years have been many, many companies that held a license for Sea Monkeys that he partnered with, and they all kind of had different reactions. There was one called Larmy Limited, one called Basic Fun, one called Educational Insights. There may have been more. Today it resides with big-time toys. But this article that we dug up from when he was still alive, basically this guy gets in touch with a lot of these people and some of them said they believe the story, that it was just some story that this angry neighbor cooked up to slander his name.

Other ones have said, yeah, you know what, everyone kind of knew about it, but we're not going to take that out on the sea monkeys. Right. And he was a nice guy to us, and what he does in his private time is no one's business. Yeah, the thing is, is like some of the people that he was doing business with were Jewish and were taking some of the things he was doing in his private life personally themselves. Like the guy who was the president of Basic Fun, that's one of the worst names for a toy company ever.

It's like don't get too excited. This is just basic fun. They had a spin-off company called Minimal Enjoyment. Right. He got the license, or his company got the license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and marketing Sea Monkeys. And he apparently asked Von Braunhut, like, is this true? And Von Braunhut told him, no, there's this developer I'm in a dispute with who's like trying to drum up bad press. They're all lies.

Well, within a year, the New York Times wrote an article about that annual rally at the Aryan Nation compound in Idaho and said that Harold Von Braunhut had been a speaker there. So the guy from Basic Fund was like, yeah, that's it. I'm done with your contract's broken. Yeah. I mean, that did happen sometimes over the years.

And other times, you know, people, I guess money talks, so they were willing to put up with it. Yeah. Yep. It's crazy. He, you know, like when he was called personally, he said, I don't have to defend myself to you or anyone else. I'm hanging up.

Right. So, I guess it was a time when, you know, pre-internet, pre-social media where you could kind of get away with stuff like this a little easier. Yeah. I mean, like he was, yeah, it was just an open secret. And I think, like you said, I think you hit the nail on the head, man. When there's like this much money involved and when you're talking about a brand where it's just like an beloved American icon, like people just look the other way on the fact

that you're a white supremacist, you know? It's bizarre, but apparently this is a story of how the world works in that respect. Yeah, it was interesting for this one article, I think from the early 2000s. From the All? Was that, oh, no, no, no, that was from 2011, the other one was... Oh, yeah, yeah. That was when he had currently, the licensee was Educational Insights. And they, at the time, it was funny to go back and read this, that they were trying

to update the image for the sea monkeys. Yeah, yeah. And they had like these draw, they hired some big advertising guy and marketing guy and he came in and was basically like, no man, like kids these days, they don't want these little skinny pot bellied king, queen, prince and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed them up and put capes on them and made a new jingle and they never went with any of that stuff.

It kind of all went in the wastebasket, I think. Well, one new thing did come out of it and Harold Braun had a patent on it. It was one of his last patents. It was a watch that you could inject a couple of live sea monkeys into and they would live in there for 24 hours before I guess either they died or if you could suck them back out and put them back in their aquarium.

But you could walk around with your two favorite or luckiest sea monkeys for the day and tell time as well. So that was, there was at least one thing that came out of that updating. But if you go back and look, if you look at those, you're like, this is pretty lame. And you go back and look today at the Sea Monkey packaging, it is basically back to how it was like in that Joe Orlando

style. But if you do want to watch some business people do some tap dancing, it's really interesting. Read this article. It's called The Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist. It was in the LA Times on October 1st, 2000 written by Tamar Brott, who did a pretty good job of like, just some good old-fashioned like footwork or legwork going to pound the beat.

Pound the beat with the footwork. Sniff them off the case. You know what I'm saying. pound the beat with the footwork. Sniff them off the case. You know what I'm saying. All right. Well, let's take another break and we're going to come back and we're going to talk about where things stand today in the fight over the rights and the fortune of the sea monkeys. If you want to know, then you're in luck.

Just listen up to Josh and Chuck Chuck stuff you should know. In July 1881, a man walked into a train station, pulled out a gun, and shot the president of the United States. James Garfield's assassination horrified the American people, and they wanted his killer, Charles Guiteau, punished. But Guiteau, many experts believed, was insane. What had seemed like a black and white case was now much grayer.

Could the justice system truly deliver justice in a situation like this? Guiteau's trial was extraordinary, but not unique. Important trials have always raised questions and made us reflect on the world we live in. I'm Mira Hayward, and I'm exploring the stories of these trials in my new podcast, History on Trial. Every episode will cover a different trial from American history and reveal how the legal

battles of the past have shaped our present. Listen and subscribe to History on Trial, now the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. So we know what happened. Actually, how did he die?

I didn't even see that. I didn't see that either. He died in 2003, but I'm not sure why. All right, so he died. Yeah, that's true. But he left behind his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut. Did you look her up? Oh yeah.

Okay. Yeah, she was an actress. She was sort of like a pinup bombshell B movie actress. Is that fair to say? It's fairish. I had also seen her movies as described as adult films as well. Sure. She was in a movie, I got to see this one, it's called Love After Death. And it's a

soft core zombie flick. Oh, that's sweet. From the 60s, yeah. But yeah, she was a pretty interesting person in her own right as well. Yeah, and she says for her, as far as the Aryan nation stuff, she says like, I never knew and saw this side of him. So I don't know if she's being on the level or if she's just kind of quashing this and covering for him. It's kind of not clear to me.

I saw, I don't know if it was in that New York Times article or in the 1988 Washington Post article, but his first wife was contacted and interviewed for it, and she was like, what are you guys talking about? Really? Yeah. So who knows? Maybe he did just keep the... He was clearly somebody who could compartmentalize the different parts of his personality.

So maybe he really did just leave the wives out of it. How could you not know something like that? That's crazy. Just going to Idaho on my yearly trip. Yeah, that's weird. He always goes to Idaho when the Aryan nation assembles. All right. So Yolanda Signoreli von Braunhut lived and I think still lives,

or at least as of two years ago when this article came out, in the Potomac River estate in southern Maryland, but she is, she's broke basically. She has no electricity, no running water, and she has been in a legal battle with Big Time Toys and their chief executive, Sam Harwell, for basically several years trying to get money because Big Time Toys says, this is our company now. Yeah. Big Time Toys sounds like a guy. I'd be nervous about going into business with them.

I'm more of a basic fun guy. Big time toys sounds like they're moving too fast for me, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, Yolanda Braunhut has, she's got kind of like a great gardens thing going on right now against her will. This is not something she's happy about at all. And her position is, as far as The Times tells it, is that she engaged in a licensing deal, which is how Sea Monkeys have been produced basically since the beginning,

with a company, with that company Big Time Toys, where they would handle the packaging and the distribution. And her company, her own little company, would handle making the actual sea monkeys that were put into the packaging that Big Time Toys sold, right? So Big Time Toys would buy the sea monkeys that they would put into the packages and then would turn around and sell to the public. That was the arrangement initially. Right. So we have the secret formula that no one else has seemed to be able to crack.

This is Yolanda talking. Yeah. Should I have done my Yolanda voice? Yeah, let's hear it. I don't know what she sounds like. High-pitched Italian stereotype. Let's hear it, Chuck. No, no, no.

It would offend like three different groups of people if I did that. Yeah, yeah. I think, stereotype. Let's hear it, Chuck. No, no, no. She, it would offend like three different groups of people if I did that. Yeah, yeah. I think you would. She basically said, we have the secret formula, the only one that works that can keep these things alive. Everyone else has tried and failed. And so we will sell these to you and you can do everything else and cut me a check. And there was also a side deal that said you can buy this company, including the

secret formula, for $5 million upfront and then another $5 million in installments. And so Big Time basically called her up a few years ago, probably about five years ago at this point if my math is right, and said, you know what, all these payments we've been making to you for the licensing deal, we just kind of consider that layaway and as far as we're concerned, we own Sea Monkeys now. Yeah, we've reached that five million dollar point, so they're ours. Which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should have been separate payments. Right. If I understand this correctly.

But I mean, when somebody does that, what are you going to do? You got to go sue them. Right. And that's what they're doing. And they're bleeding this lady dry, at least as far as this New York Times profile is concerned. And I mean, if you get into a fight like that and you don't have the money, you can lose. So this could be a sad end to the sea monkey saga. Because here's the other problem. You might be saying to

yourself, well, why doesn't she just not sell them the sea monkeys anymore? Well, she did. She stopped when they stopped making payments and said they owned the sea monkey brand. And it turned out that in this court case, that big time toys had been buying knockoff sea monkeys from China. And then that's what they were putting into the sea monkey thing. So apparently if you're buying, if you buy currently a sea monkey package, you're getting big time toys packaging and Chinese knockoff sea monkey packets.

Which don't work, apparently. I went and looked at Amazon reviews and almost all of them for all the products said none of them hatched or they hatched for like a day. These things stink. When I was a kid, they worked. So it's weird that, it's sort of ironic that they ended up creating this special breed, essentially, that worked. And that ended up being their undoing because in court in the affidavit, the leader of this Harwell guy, whose wife, by the way, is the

head, she's the speaker of the house of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Oh yeah? Yeah, they're a power family all the way around, not to be trifled with. In his affidavit, he says he outsourced the sea monkeys of China and says there are seven recognized species of Artemia brine shrimp and this is not one of them. So because they had created their own species, it ended up being their undoing at court it looks like because it doesn't officially exist as a real species that these guys are getting.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he got a patent on the species that they made. Well, no, that's what I'm saying though, but he's not getting that species. Oh, I see. He's getting these, well, they're not knockoffs. They're Mother Nature's own from China, but they're not the ones that are working. Right, I gotcha. So it's just a mess. But then still, doesn't that raise questions about how you could use the sea monkey's name or something?

That's what I wondered. But I guess if they had the license to use the sea monkey's name because they were in charge of packaging and distribution. Maybe. Then yeah, I guess they could say, well, we're not going to use the official ones any longer. We're going to use these natural ones. Man, what a mess.

Well, and it's a mess too because you're like, oh, do I root for the side of this guy who was a white nationalist? Mm-hmm. But you know, his wife says she didn't know anything about that. Right. And she's going broke and has been basically had this company stolen from her, it seems like.

Yeah. It's just, I don't know. I don't know what to think. Or do you root for the guys who are apparently stealing the company from the— Big time toys? —widow of the white nationalist? Can't root for big time toys. Yeah. You know what I predict though, Chuck? I predict that Sea Monkeys, the brand,

will ultimately rise above this. That it will survive this somehow and still be around 20, 30 years from now. The Sea Monkeys will take over? Yeah. They will eventually overthrow the human race, like the Aryans plotted to overthrow the US government. What a story.

It's quite a story. That's a good one, man. Thanks for digging this up. Sure. Well, if you want to know more about sea monkeys, just start digging around, pulling at the loose threads. You're going to find some interesting stuff. And since I said interesting stuff, that means it's time friends for a listener mail. I'm going to call this Pompei, Pompeian?

Mm-hmm. Lemons. Okay. Is that how you would say it, Pompeian? Yeah, I thought that was beautiful. All right, long time listener, first time emailer, guys. Recently listened to the Pompei show, very informative. And I used to be a tour guide in Europe and led close to 15 tours on the Amalfi coast,

Pompei and Mount Vesuvius. I listened to Josh experience with the lemons. They do in fact grow to be the size of your head. However, those gigantic lemons are actually called Sedri and are more for show than anything. They're called Sedri the entertainer. If you ever cut one in half, the inside is actually about the size of a normal lemon. The rind can be a few inches thick. And boy are they bitter.

Definitely not something you keep around for lemonade. Just something I wanted to share. Thanks for ruining everything for me. And also another thought, the other day in the car, have either of you just said no when one of you asked for a commercial break? Thought it'd be funny if one of you just said nah. We've come close. We have, haven't we? I don't know. Did it not make it into an episode? It might not have. We have and we just edited that part out and kept going, I think. If you want to get in touch with us and ruin our reality like Matt did, you can send all

of us, including Jerry, an email to stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoshouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and I am so excited to let you know that my latest podcast interview is with the one and only Tom Hanks. I have left many wonderful atmosphere or a loving atmosphere without thinking, oh, things From the Scopes Monkey trial to O.J. Simpson, trials have always made us reflect on the

world we live in. I'm Mira Hayward and my podcast, History on Trial, will explore fascinating trials from American history. Join me in revealing the true story behind the headlines and discover how the legal battles of the past have shaped our present. Listen and subscribe to History on Trial, now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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