Stuff You Should KnowAnyone 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.
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 twenty eighteen. 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 sea monkey.
Yes, 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's 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.
Non existent sea monkey father no less. Yeah, So, Chuck, I realized that I don't know something about you, which is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
And we're Sea Monkey brothers.
We are. We know a lot about one another. We know one another.
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 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.
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, and then old school granny who lived in a house in the country. And so granted 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. It's nice, so I think they're mainly Uncle Eddie. So I got I had a big stack of comics from I guess the nineteen sixties that were like Man from Uncle. I'm trying to read. 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 from Uncle 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, 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 for X ray specs, sure, 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.
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?
Yeah, where the ninety eight pound weekling gets sand kicked in his face. Totally man, Yeah, that's really playing on some fifteen year old's insecurities and.
Worked Oh yeah, for sure. Sure, And what about you?
I remember Sea Monkeys.
There's one that always stuck out to me was a Bonker's ad from the eighties. 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 are like these fruit. 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 just perfect and they struck my brain just right. So I've always got that Bonker's comic book ad in there too, and a lot of bubble bubbleum 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, sure, but now that 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 Monkey's ad, if you'll remember correctly, and I think for many decades. It was very actually the same thing. It was this kind of group, this tribe of humanoid figures. It was a family, but exactly what kind of family they were is really up for debate. So there they were kind of lanky, like stringy, ropey arms and legs, paunchy tummies, 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 in the illustration, they were like, we need something on the end of their tail there, buddy, And it's just 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. Uh, he ran some comic lines at DC Comics for allays 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'll get 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 didn't mention the castle, which is kind of key because somehow they have these little crown like heads and I guess we're kings of the bowl.
I guess they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea monkey family.
Kings of the fishbowl, and only inhabitants actually.
So if you right, so you could proclaim yourself the royal family, you mean, And I have 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 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, uh as, sea monkeys don't exist, but they are real, little living creatures that you buy, right, have shipped in an envelope back in those days, in an envelope to your home.
And they are actually their own things.
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 anchored along with a micro crustaceans expert named Di Augustino.
I can't remember his first name.
I think when you have a name like Degastino, you can just go buy that.
So Degastino and this guy named Harold von Broughton or braun Hot, right, they got together and they actually took Brian shrimp and made them into something different, 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 Brian 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 there's.
No clapping and squealing with original Brian shrimp right now. So through these cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp. Brian shrimp were already you could. 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 all 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 tartar Grade episode, they basically do the same thing that tartagrades 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.
Yeah, So you get this little package they're basically their Brian 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.
Yeah, that's like their food. It's like spirrillina 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 it was the only one that worked, and it was owned owned by this Van Broughton character, Van Broughton bron Hutt.
Bron Hutt. I don't know. It's a tough word, 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 two thousand and three, Harold von Bronhutt 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 Brian shrimp that are in the state of crypto bios. This is this dried out, descated 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.
Yeah.
In fact, early on, the sea monkeys were originally just called Instant Life, I believe, is what the name they were originally marketed under. Yeah, not the best name.
No, and it is it's weird that that name was chosen because it turns out that Harold von Braunhutt is or was a marketing genius. He wrote the original thirty two 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 are that this is like their bible, you know, the original version of it would have later editions of it.
Couldn't find it anywhere.
Well, I don't know if it still comes with it, but for many many many years and even after his death, that original pros which told this fantastical story. I mean, that's the whole point. It wasn't just like add water and you're on set, right, I 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're they're like they love to race 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 that treatment that George Lucas wrote about Wookies and Chewbacca's planet that got turned into the Star Wars Christmas special? Yeah, this is the exact same thing. But this is the Sea Monkeys world, right.
I would like to see what 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 that was a TV show in the eighties starring Howie Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get any better. Like, who else would have been better than Howie Mandel for that?
It was Howie Mendel. He produced it as well, along with the Chioto brothers, who were known for making killer clowns from outer space.
Yeah, so you know what you're kind of going to get there.
It is the definition of camp Like they watched Pee Wee's Playhouse and they're like, this is kind of campy. But let's increase it by thirty five percent. Yeah, and that's what they did.
It was not long for this world though, what right?
No?
And the thing is is, I don't know if we've gotten this across. It was live action.
Oh yeah, 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.
Uh.
I didn't see it, and I only watched like a bit of one episode enough to judge the whole eleven I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and Marty Kroft without the LSD.
Right, it was with PCP instinct. 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, you know, after some tinkering, Von Brounhutt 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 Brounhutt when he started to market these things early on, he was following immediately in the wake of something called instant fish that I think Whammo 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 Braunhaut, in a stroke of genius, said, you know what, I'm going to go right to the source. So he started marketing directly two kids.
He started hanging out at elementary school parking lot.
He did, and he'd be like, here, 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?
Three hundred and three million pages? Oh wow a year?
And now though, so most of those were two page inserts. So that's one hundred and fifty issues of one hundred and fifty 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 nineteen sixty four, and I don't know exactly when it stopped, but it was well into the nineties 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 right, 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 Brian shrimp from him, and they arrived and you followed the instructions and now they're floating around.
Yeah, well, you probably got mom or dad to cut you a forty nine cent check or have them cut a check, or you know, you you maybe got the funds from your lemonade stand and converted that to a cash bond.
Yeap, a bear bond.
I don't know what any of that stuff is, but yeah, so you probably had little assistance for mom and that, or maybe you put a dollar in an envelope.
I'll bet many kids did. I wonder if brown Hut sent the the change the change back, or was like, I'm keeping this change, kid, just to teach you a lesson that to send a dollar bill in the mail.
Anymore, because he 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 brown Hut this was not his only jam. He had close to two hundred patents on everything. Like you know, we mentioned the X ray specs and that great, great ad of the guy looking at his hand or the or the sec system misogynistic ad of him leering at a woman in a dress, right, and X ray spex were very disappointing him 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 that's a case of fraud, Yeah, 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 fishbowl, fish food and instructions and that was it.
And there was a.
Guarantee that you would never see your invisible fish, well, that they would remain invisible.
Yeah, and that's 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 had He invented balder dash.
Oh, that's right.
He also invented those doll's eyes where you lay your doll back and its eyes closed. He invented those.
Yeah, he invented that technology, which is 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 he raced motorcycles and cars under the name of the Green Hornet. He was a talent manager for a couple of people. One was a mental list.
Yeah, talent talent manager like Broadway Danny Rose was a talent manager.
Okay, I don't know that is bumau go along with it? What is that? Is that? What's that from the Name's familiar, but I don't know.
It was a Woody Allen movie where he played that was it was a talent manager that managed like you know people like this that would the high divers, that would dive into shallow pools and mentalists. And this guy was even a wouldn'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 that was That was him and he had his own act.
Oh god, okay, did you see the guy who who the high dive guy? Did you see his jump?
No?
Oh my, okay, there's a guy named Amrie Lemouth. I believe Yeah he Yeah, Imri Lamouth. If you go look, I'm up, Hi, n Ri Lamoth, You're going to be treated to an ap video that was shot in the early seventies from the looks of it, where he's opening up for an evil canievil act in a parking lot and god knows where in New Jersey, and he climbs up this ladder, a forty foot ladder, and below beneath is one of these tiny little kiddie pools filled with like eighteen inches of water, and this guy, who is clearly in his mid seventies maybe older, dives forty feet into eighteen inches of water in a kiddie pool belly first. He does basically a belly flop and immediately stands up with like teta.
It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life.
And this guy, Harold von Braunhutt, managed that guy back in the day.
Yeah, okay, he wasn't a He was a magician who worked under the name the Great.
Tilepo that's a pretty good name.
And he also admitted something the Directomat, 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 fifty 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 fifty nine to ninety five, and it was actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped at LaGuardia Airport in nineteen seventy nine 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 Coyoga Agent M five?
Yeah, the Kyoga Agent in five. It's basically a telescoping metal whip. You know, you've seen the telescoping batons and things that cops can use. I guess a sure 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 in my car. Sure, and if anyone ever reaches their hand in the window, then they're gonna get a wrapped knuckles smart 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 and you plus, you have to practice with that kind of thing, that's all.
It's a big commitment. You just turning and running is way better.
Well, yeah, just I went back to plan A, which is poo poop my pants and cry right, hopefully that works.
No one wants to punch of guy who's just pooped his pants, you know.
All right, so none of the butt at least, right, So this m five telescoping want or whip. This is where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this up right before the ad break, because it turns out that mister von bro Hud, mister von brown Hut 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.
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen to JH. Sh Suffus no STUFFU No, 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.
He's so thoroughly documented by legitimate sources like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles.
Times, his own mouth.
The 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 is has was a longtime contributor to white nationalist groups, specifically the Aryan Nations out of Idaho, which is 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 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 here in lies a real moral conundrum for a lot of people, under standably.
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 Aryan nation. I don't want any money going to Aryan nation, so I feel horrible that my money went to you, which you turned in turn gave to.
The Aryan nation.
Right. However, this M five was there was a man named Richard Butler. This guy was a real piece of human garbage.
He was a 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 brought upon trial. And basically this M five little telescoping whip that was invented by von Braunhutt, that was specifically used that that product, and proceeds from that specifically went to a fund to help out Richard Butler. Right, so we know that for sure.
Yeah, everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt pretty swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties, Richard Butler is brought up, along with I think fourteen or fifteen 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 Cyoga agent M five as a great you know, 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 Arian and the inventor of this project product has pledged that twenty five of those sixty dollars 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 Aryan 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 a beginning of that being open because, like you said, late eighties, what was an eighty eight I think? And the Washington Post basically got a hold of this 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 that this was him, right, and but not try and clear it up or anything. Basically just say that's a bunch of bunk. Where there were news letters written for an organization called the National Anti Zionist Institute, written by one Hendrick 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. So he wasn't like covering his tracks very well at all.
So he so all that started that Washington Post expose a 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's 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 tip the Washington Post after this or not. This is already like pretty well known in the toy industry and pretty well documented. Like it wasn't just that this Harold von Braunhutt gave money to the Aryan nation, like he would go to their annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself. He would he would speak at some of their their conferences and apparently not very well received.
I thought, that's pretty funny speaker.
No, he would.
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 Arian Nation. The closest thing to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler saying that the inventor of this is pledged twenty five dollars 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 von pledges. And apparently a former spokesman for the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist, he says, spoke out about Harold von Brown Hutt 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 Bronhutt was actually Jewish. He was born to Jennette Cohen and Edward Bronhutt, not vonn Bhut. Out of that little Vaughan to I guess germanize him, I guess so. And he was born in New York City on March thirty first, nineteen twenty six as Harold Nathan brown Hut. 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 that The nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article did a couple of things. One out of the inventor of sea monkeys as an Aryan white supremacist, or I should say just a white supremacist, he was an Aran. 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 he was outed in this in this Washington Post article like two times over, so everybody was mad at him from either side.
Right.
The thing is like, even after, I guess, the Area 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 intracted as he was before and still was was a part of the organization's conferences and stuff like that.
Yeah, and he was. It wasn't just the Aryan Nations. He In nineteen eighty five, The Washington Post says that US Attorney Thomas Bauer there was a weapons case in nineteen eighty five against a member of the clan Grand Dragon Dale Reusch.
Yeah, it was in nineteen eighty I think that the transaction happened.
Okay, but the weapons case was in nineteen eighty five, gotcha, and Van Brounhutt basically loan the guy twelve thousand dollars so he could buy more than eighty firearms. Yeah, like, here go buy a bunch of guns.
Well, okay, yes, and this is a Grand Wizard of the Klan I believe right, yes, So the reason I pointed out that it happened in nineteen eighty the year before the Washington Post had drummed up in that nineteen eighty eight article. The year before he had paid like thirteen hundred dollars 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 eighty three 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 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 the license for sea monkeys that he partnered with, and they all kind of had different reactions. That was one called Larmie 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 gonna we're not gonna 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 we're taking some of the things he was doing in his private life personally themselves. Like the guy who was the president of Basic Fund, that's one of the worst names for a toy company based It's like, don't get too excited, this is just Basic Fund.
That they had a spinoff company called Minimal Enjoyment.
Right.
He 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 Braunhutt, like, is this true, and von Brounhutt told him no, there's this developer 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 Area Nation Compound in Idaho and said that Harold von Bronhut had been speaker there. So the guy from Basic Fun was like, that's it. I'm done with your contracts 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. Yeah, like people just look the other way on the fact that you're a white supremacist. You know, it's 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 two thousands. From the all was that oh no, no, no, that was from twenty eleven. 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 drawers. They hired some big advertising guy and marketing guy, and he came in and was basically like, 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 waste basket.
I think.
Well, one new thing did come out of it, and von Or Harold brown Hut had a patent on it was one of his li patents. It was a watch that you could inject a couple of live sea monkeys into and they would live in there for twenty four 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 first, two thousand, written by Tamar Brought, who did a pretty good job of like just some good old fashioned like footwork or legwork going to pound the pound the beat with the.
Footwork, sniff him 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 talking about 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 to JH sh suffuse stuff.
You s No, 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 two thousand and three, but I'm not sure why. All right, So he died, Yeah, that's true.
But he left behind his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhutt.
Did you look her up?
Oh? Yeah, okay, yeah she was. She was an actress. She was sort of a sort of like a pin up, bombshell b movie actress.
It's fairsh 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 softcore zombie flick from the sixties. Yeah, but yes, 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 was kind of not clear to.
Me I saw.
I don't know if it was in that New York Times article or in the nineteen eighty eight 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.
Man, how could you not know something? Right? That's crazy? Just going to Idaho on my yearly trip.
Yeah, that's weird. He always goes to Idaho in the Aryan Nation assembles.
All right. So, Yolanda Signora Levan bron Hut lived and I think still lives in 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 she's she's broke. Yeah, basically, she has no electricity, no running water, and she is and been in illegal battle with Big Time Toys and their chief executive Sam Harwell for basically several years, trying to get money because Big Time Toy says, this is our company now.
Yeah, Big Time Toys sounds like 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 yeah, So, Yolanda Brown Hutt 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 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 been able to crack.
This is Yolanda talking.
Yeah, should I have done my Jolana voice?
Yeah, let's hear it.
I don't know what.
She sounds like, high pitched Italian stereotype.
Let's hear it.
No, no, no, she It would have been like three different groups of people if yeah, yeah, I think you wi. 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 five million bucks up front and then another five million and 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 there ares.
Which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should have been separate payments, if I understand this correctly.
But I mean, when somebody does that, what are you going to do? You got to go see 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 big, big Time Toys have 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 a special breed essentially that worked, and that ended up being there undoing. Because in court and the affidavit, the leader, this Harwell guy, whose wife, by the way, is ahead. She's a speaker of the House of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Yeah, they're a power family all the way around and 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 our Timia brine shrimp and this is not one of them. So because they had created their own species, it ended up being there 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 that. But he's not getting that species. Oh, I see, he's getting these Well they're not knockoffs their mother Nature's own. Sure, sure, China, but they're not the ones that.
Are working, right, I got youa.
So it's just a mess.
But then still doesn't that like raise questions about how you could use the Sea Monkey's name or.
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, but you know, his wife says she didn't know anything about that, 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 fake waido of the white national.
Y for big time toys?
Yeah? You know what. I predict that, Chuck.
I predict that Sea Monkeys the brand will ultimately rise about this that it will. It will survive this somehow and still be around twenty thirty years from now.
The sea monkeys will take over.
Yeah, they will eventually overthrow the human race, like the Arians 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 gonna find some interesting stuff. And since I said interesting stuff, that means it's time friends for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this pomp Pei Pompeiian lemons. Okay, is that how you would say it?
Pompey in Yeah? I thought that was beautiful.
All right, long time listener, first time emailer. Guys recently listened to the Pompei show. Very informative. Uh and I to be a tour guide in Europe and led close to fifteen tours on the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii 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 end of day in it.
If you ever cut one and a 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. I 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.
Well that is for Matt McDonald, who is a software developer at Neocloud.
Thanks a lot, Matt.
I think I was kind of disappointed to read that email originally, but whatever, I guess you got to just live with reality, right.
You've made an enemy today.
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 Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuffishould Know dot Com.
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