I loved my Sea Monkeys as a kid. I had a little tank with a castle in it, and have weird foggy memories of trying to train them but not really being successful. I have no idea what happened to them or when I eventually got rid of them, but the memory is full of nostalgia. Naturally, I’m about to wreck that nostalgia for you.
Speaking of things you loved as a kid, listen to the GOAT Team chat about what Selena Gomez has been up to…
Harold Braunhut – who later changed his name to Harold von Braunhut – sold a bunch of weird things to kids in his life. There were Crazy Crabs (he would literally just post a box of hermit crabs to your door), X-Ray Specs (promised you’d be able to see through skin and clothing, of which you could do neither), and The Invisible Goldfish (that came with a guarantee that you’d never see the fish).
Most famously, he invented the method of freeze drying brine shrimp eggs so that they can be mailed or packaged, and boom, Sea Monkeys was born.
There’s just one problem, and you might have picked up on it when I said that he changed his name to Harold von Braunhut. Despite being Jewish himself, Harold was a white supremacist.
He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, the the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said that they had “long been monitoring Harold von Braunhut. He’s linked to some of the most extreme racist and anti-Semitic organizations in the country.”
He also owned Nazi memorabilia and once said that Hitler “just got bad press,” so that sure is something.
Harold von Braunhut died in 2003 after a fall. He’s been gone for nearly two whole decades, but Sea Monkeys are still very much a thing. There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to keeping them alive, and all sorts of other forums discussing the ins and outs of Sea Monkeys.
Sea Monkeys might still be bringing us joy, but the guy who invented them is well and truly best left in the past.
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