The Greatest of Comic Book Hoax

Last updated on April 24th, 2024 at 12:34 am

Sea Monkeys!! This is the ad that sold millions of kits!! Every kid had a friend that bought one, with those wonderful creatures just happy and waiting to be your new pet.

The story of sea monkeys started with Harold von Braunhut. As a marine biologist he became interested in Artemia Salina, a marine organism that could hibernate when out of water. He tried to sell them as “Instant Life” that could magically revive when put in water. But he had no customers and Instant Life was a failure.

But he did not give up. He got a talented artist, Joe Orlando, (later become VP of DC Comics) to draw an ad and aimed his product where he knew it would be most effective. IN the comic book ads, straight to the kids. The comic books ads were eagerly read for their treasures, that could be yours for only a few dollars. From Bodybuilding ads to live monkeys to horror items, even your own nuclear sub. Kids didn’t care about logic, they wanted what they were promised. The sea monkeys fit nicely into that genre and Braunhut became a multi-millionaire.

Then the bottom fell out of the sea monkeys. They were brine shrimp.

The sea monkey trade tried to keep it going by different accessories, but the kids caught wise to the trickery. They were branded a flop, and of interest only to kids as a science project. But the sea monkeys did not disappear or fade away. The ad ran for too long, the idea of the magical little being was so appealing that the sea monkeys entered our pop culture and even sold themselves. Sea monkeys held a special place in our hearts because deep down we wanted them to be real.

Produced by Majestic Studios in 2004. They have not been re-issued.

Sea monkeys made an appearance in “The Secret Life of Pets.”

In 1992 in the Saturday cartoons aired The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys .It was a CBS live action television series. A bumbling scientist played by Howie Mandell enlarged his daughter’s sea monkeys to full sized .It was expected to go up against TNMT. It was a failure that lasted 11 episodes.