March 6, 2018 • 52 mins
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 today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. 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
(00:22):
sea monkeys. Jerry is mama see monkey. Yes, she's got
a little blonde bob hair do going on. And I
guess we're baby sea monkeys. I guess. Yeah, that's that's cool. Well,
let's some we'll we'll let the dad no exist. Okay,
we're brothers, that's right. I think that's a good move
(00:45):
with a non existent father, which really explains a lot
about us. Nonexistent sea monkey father no less so chuck Um,
I realized that I don't know something about you, which
is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
And or sea monkey brothers. We we are. We know
a lot about one another. We know one another smells um, looks, scowls,
(01:09):
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, um, because remember I
read Archie and Richie Rich. Oh yes, yeah, yeah yeah,
(01:31):
and I wasn't so well. Here's a couple of things
I read Archie and Richie Rich growing up, and UM
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. Uh.
(01:54):
She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was I had
sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV who lived
in a and then old school granny who lived in
a house in the country. And so granny Granny Bryant
didn't have TV or anything like that. But what she
did have in the back room was a bunch of
(02:16):
my dad and uncle um Ed's old toys and comic
books from when they were kids. So I think the
mainly Uncle Eddie, so I got. I had a big
stack of comics from my guests the nineteen sixties, uh
that were like Man from Uncle Um. I'm trying to read.
I'm trying to think of a few more. No superhero stuff,
(02:39):
but just those weird sort of. I guess it wasn't weird,
but man from Uncle is only when 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. So you
(03:02):
made your way through that stack of multiple times, oh
many many times, Like I remember the ads, I remember,
I remember everything about him. So then you remember, obviously,
I think you probably knew where I was going with
us from the outset. You remember the ads for the
sea monkeys. Then I remember sea monkeys, remember X ray specs,
(03:23):
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 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
(03:45):
on and a turtleneck and he just looked like he
was ready to get mellow, you know. Oh you know
the other one too, was the Charles Atlas workout thing.
Do you remember that? Yeah, where the pound weekly gets
stand kicked in his face. Totally. Yeah, that's really playing
on some fifteen year old insecurities and it worked. And
(04:06):
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 um, I think I've
asked you before the if you had ever had bonkers
there like these fruit shooes they were like just the
superior Starburst. And there was a comic book ad in
(04:27):
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 um,
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 I've always got that
Bonker's comic book ad in there too, and a lot
(04:49):
of bubble bubble um 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 Monkeys
And 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, of course,
which were pretty hilarious. Sure, but now that I don't
(05:11):
think they had any like actual ads in them. They
were just strictly subscription based. So in that Sea Monkey's aid,
if you'll remember correctly, and I think for many decades
it was virtually the same thing. It was this kind
of group, this tribe of humanoid figures. It was a family.
(05:32):
But but exactly what kind of family they were is
really up for debate. So they're they were kind of lanky,
like stringy ropey arms and legs, paunchy tummies, naked is
the day they were born, webbed feet, webb tails, Like
the end of their tail was like webbed, which if
(05:52):
you look closely, I think was probably just a device
to cover Dad's junk in the In the illustration, they're like,
we need something on the end of their tail there, buddy. Uh.
And this this just like this classic illustration of the
sea monkeys that apparently was done by this guy named
Joe Orlando Magazine Yeah, he's from Mad Magazine. Creepy Magazine
(06:15):
is another one. He ran some comic lines at d
C Comics. Was 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 right now. Look at that. It's like unchanged, I know.
And what's great too, is that we'll talk about later.
(06:36):
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
(06:59):
they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea monkey family,
kings of the fish bowl and only inhabitants. Actually, So
if you write so you can proclaim yourself the royal family,
you mean, I have done that at our house. So. Um,
if you look closely at some of those ads, they say, um,
there's like a little fine print that says these are
(07:19):
caricatures of sea monkeys. Is not actually what your sea
monkeys look like 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,
(07:42):
of course, well sea monkeys, uh as, sea monkeys don't exist.
But they are real little living creatures that you buy,
have shipped in an envelope back in those days, in
an envelope to your home, and they are actually their
(08:02):
own things. So what they are ultimately is something called
artemia or Brian shrimp. But the guy who ended up
calling them sea monkeys was actually well within his right
to call him 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
(08:24):
expert named Di Augustino. I can't remember his first name.
I think when you have a name like de Gistino,
you can just go by that. So so de Gistino
and this guy named Harold von Broughton or brought bron Hot, right,
they got together and they actually took Brian shrimp and
(08:45):
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
(09:09):
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 no clapping
and squealing with original Brian shrimp, right. So through these
(09:31):
cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp. Brian shrimp are
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, um 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,
(09:53):
they basically do the same thing that's harder grades too.
They enter into the state of suspended animation UM. A
desk hated 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 there basically their brin
shrimp eggs is what it is, or what they are,
(10:15):
and then you get purified water. Put him in there,
and I believe there's a growth formula as well. Right, Yeah,
that's like their food. It's like spilina 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
(10:37):
only one that worked, and it was owned owned by
this Van Broughten character. Van Broughten braun Hutt. Braun Hut.
I 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 um. Until he died
in two thousand three, Harald von braun Hutt and his
wife Yolanda were the only two people on the planet
(10:59):
who knew what this special formula was that created those connections.
Because you remember, you've got sea monkeys little Brian shrimp
that are in the state of cryptobiosis, 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
(11:22):
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 name. They were originally marketed under. Its not
the best, not the best name, no uh, and it
is It's weird that um that name was chosen because
(11:45):
it turns out that Harold von braun Hutt is or
was a marketing genius. UM 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.
(12:08):
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 was which
(12:28):
told this fantastical story. I mean that's the whole point.
It wasn't just like Edwater in your on set, I
told the whole story of sea monkeys. Yeah. It said
things like, you can your sea monkeys can be hypnotized.
You can train them to play baseball, Um, you can
race them. They're they're like they love to race. There
all sorts of things. You can basically train them into
(12:48):
a pack of friendly seals, I think is the way
they put it. It talked about like their um courtship
and reproduction and just all sorts of stuff like it was, Yeah,
this guy is just basically do you remember that that
treatment that George Lucas wrote about Wookies and and Chewbacca's
planet that got turned into the Star Wars Christmas special.
(13:08):
This is the exact same thing. But this is the
Sea Monkeys world, right, I would like to see 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, UM
starring how He Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get
any better. Like who else would have been better than
(13:31):
how He Mandel For that, it was Howie Mandel. He
produced it as well, along with the Chioto brothers, who
were known for making killer clowns from outer space. 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 and that's what they did.
(13:51):
It was not 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
(14:12):
a wink and a nod to other adults. It was
a weird, weird, weird show. Yeah it was. I didn't
see it, and I only watched like a bit of
one episode. I didn't see enough to judge the whole eleven.
I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and
Marty Croft without the LSD, right, it was with PCP instead.
(14:36):
That's how it struck me. I was like, these people
are on angel dust. Yeah. But all this to say
that it was 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
(14:58):
cool that something they got in the mail really had
come to life. Yeah, for sure, and you could raise
them and after you know, after some tinkering Um von
braun Hut, Um managed to get them to live for
a while. So these were like pets to to the kids.
Plus I also think Chuck I suspect and this is
a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success.
Um von braun Hut when he started to market these
(15:21):
things early on, he was following immediately in the wake
of something called instant fish that I think Whamo 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
(15:43):
in a in a stroke of genius, said, you know what,
I'm gonna 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, kids,
come look at my minivan. I've got a bunch of
stuff for you to choose from. Right. Yeah, Well, the
comic book, saying was a genius. Um how many like
three three and a half million ads a year? Was
(16:06):
at it, three hundred three million pages a year? And
now though so most of those were two page inserts.
So that's a hundred and fifty issues of a 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 ninety four, and I don't
(16:30):
know exactly when it stopped, but it was well into
the nineties that there were sea monkey um 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 the point that I was getting away
from um that I wanted to make. I think one
of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was because it
(16:51):
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 would take you to the store or
anything like that. You can't you You contracted with this
this strange man to buy these Brian shrimp from him,
(17:11):
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, uh or or you know
you you maybe got the funds from your lemonade stand
and converted that to a cash bond bearer bond. I
(17:33):
don't know any of that stuff is, but yeah, so
you probably had little assistance for mom and or maybe
you put a dollar in an envelope. I'll bet many
kids did. I wonder if Braunhud sent the change the
change back, it was like, I'm keeping this change, kid,
just to teach you a lesson not to send a
dollar bill in the mail anymore, because you can't send
change in the mail, right right, So I mean suffice
(17:56):
to say, see, 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 patents on everything. Like you know, we
mentioned the X ray specs, uh and that great great
ad of of the guy looking at his hand or
(18:19):
the or the uh sexist misogynistic ad of him leering
at a woman in a dress. Uh. 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
(18:42):
it did was it basically projected two overlapping images of
the same thing, so that edges around the outside of it,
we're just kind of fuzzier than the middle. Basically supposedly
that was what an X ray of your hand looked like. Yeah,
so that that the case of um fraud. Yeah, A
(19:04):
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, uh, which basically
means nothing. He sold nothing successfully, right. It was the
(19:26):
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, that they would
remain invisible. Yeah, and that's I think that is the
distinction that makes it not fraud As he basically said,
you're not gonna sing an hanging in this bowl, and
and that was that. What else did he do? Um?
(19:49):
He had He invented balder dash. He also invented those
um dolls eyes where you lay your doll back and
its eyes closed. He invented those. Yeah, he invented that
that technology, which is it 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 UM.
(20:12):
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 talent manager like Broadway
Danny Rose was a talent manager. Okay, I don't know
that just bum would go along with it? What is that?
Is that? What? What's that from? The name is familiar,
(20:33):
but I don't know. It was a Woody Allen movie
where he played there was it was a talent manager
that managed like you know, um, people like this that
with 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 say? Well?
(20:55):
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, no, that wasn't that was that
was him and he had his own act. Oh god, Okay,
did you see the guy who who the the high
dive guy? Did you see his jump? No? Oh my, okay,
there's a guy named on real Lemouth. I believe he Yeah,
(21:20):
on Red Lamouth. If you go look him up h
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 seventies from the looks of it,
where he's opening up for an evil kinevel act in
a parking lot and god knows where in New Jersey,
and he climbs up this ladder, a forty ft ladder,
(21:41):
and below beneath is one of these tiny little kiddie
pools filled with like eighteen inches of water. And this guy,
who who is clearly in his mid seventies maybe older,
dives forty ft into eighteen inches of water in a
kiddie pool belly first. He does basically a belly flop
and immediately stands up with like tata. It's one of
(22:04):
the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life.
And and this guy, Harold von braun Hutt, managed that
guy back in the day. Uh yeah, Okay, he wasn't
a He was a magician who worked under the name
the Great Tlepo. That's a pretty good name. And he
also inmen in something called the Director Mat, which was
this device where you punch in your destination and like
(22:28):
your 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, 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
(22:49):
some successful useful things. So he had this other thing
that you could get for like uh and it was
actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped
at a Guardia airport 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
(23:09):
the UM what what coo? Yoga agent M five, Yeah,
the kiyoga agent and five. It's basically a telescoping metal whip. Um.
You know you've seen the telescoping batons and things that
cops can use. I guess anybody can use them. And
do actually had one of those for a little while
(23:30):
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 and if anyone ever reaches their hand in the window,
then they're gonna get a wrapped knuckle. Smart. I don't
know where it went though. I didn't telescope properly, so
I was like, that's probably not good. No, it's not
(23:50):
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're just turning and
running is way better? Well? Yeah, just I went back
to plan A, which is poop, poop my pants and
cry right, hopefully that works now once the punch of
guy who's just pooped his pants, you know. All right,
so none of the but at least um, so this
(24:13):
M five telescoping water whip. Um, all right, this is
where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this
up right before the ad break. Um, because it turns
out that Mr van bro Hud, Mr von brown Hut
was perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist aryan Nazi. Sure
(24:41):
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 up
to Chuck self. You shoot stuff, you shoo, okay, Chuck,
(25:11):
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, the Yes, his own Mouth,
(25:31):
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 Arian Nations out of Idaho, which was one
(25:54):
of the original white hate groups in the United States.
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
(26:14):
having been turned around and given to the Aryan nation.
And here in 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
(26:36):
any money going to Ariyan Nation. So I feel horrible
that my money went to you, which you turn in
turn gave to the Arian Nation. Right, However, this M
five was uh. There was a man named Richard Butler. Um.
This guy was the real piece of human garbage. He
was a founder of the Arian Nation. Yeah, he was
(26:57):
the worst. He's not with us anymore, thank fully, but
he he was a very bad man. And he was
brought brought up on trial. And basically this h M
five little uh telescoping whip that was invented by von
braun Hut that was specifically UH used that that that
(27:20):
product and proceeds from that specifically went to a fund
to help out Richard Butler. So we know that. Yeah,
everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt um pretty
swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties,
Richard Butler is brought up along with I think fourteen
(27:41):
or fifteen other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges basically
trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, UM, trying
to start a race war. They were they had some
serious charges against them. They were eventually acquitted of these charges.
But but as part of this defense fund. In Aryan
Nation newsletter, UM, Richard Butler talks about the Kyoga Agent
(28:06):
M five as a great you know, um, a great
tool for every Arian 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 Ariyan Nation.
And the inventor of this project product has pledged that
twenty five of those sixty dollars will be given to
(28:29):
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
UM hate group. Yeah, and this was just like the
beginning of the can of worms, uh, which he did
not invent the can of worms, but he should have.
It was the beginning of that being open because uh,
(28:51):
like you said, late late eighties, what was the eight
eight I think in the Washington Post basically got ahold
of this story, did some investigating and found owned that
he was involved in quote some of the most extreme
racist and anti Semitic organizations in the country. Um. But
here's the deal, Like there are quotes from his mouth
(29:12):
that say things about uh inscrutable, slanty Korean eyes when
dealing with Korean shop owners and talking about uh Jews
and black people, like literal quotes. Yet when he's finally contacted,
this is great article that we kind of started with.
Um was when he was still alive. He would deny
(29:34):
that this was that this was him, and but not
try and clear it up or anything. Basically just say
that's a bunch of bunk um. There was 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
(29:55):
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. Uh 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
(30:17):
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 tipped the Washington Post off to this
or not. This is already like pretty well known in
(30:39):
the toy industry and pretty well documented. Like it wasn't
just that this um Harold von braun Hutt gave money
to the Aran Nation, Like he would go to their
annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself. He
would um. He would beak at some of their their
(31:01):
um conferences and apparently not very well received. No, he would.
He would kind of go off on topics that the
Arians 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
(31:21):
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 Area Nation. The closest thing
to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler
saying that the inventor of this has pledged twenty five
dollars per but the very fact that he was basically
allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself strongly suggests
(31:45):
that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and
legal defense fund pledges and and apparently a former spokesman
for the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist,
he says, um poke out about Harold von braun Hunt
and said he didn't know exactly how much he gave,
but he gave a lot, and he gave pretty frequently
(32:06):
when he was asked. Right. So things get a little
weirder here because it turns out that von braun Hut
was actually Jewish. He was born to Jeanette Cohen and
Edward braun Hut, not von braun Hutt at that little
Vaughan to uh, I guess germanize him uh. And he
(32:30):
was born in New York City on March thirty, first,
ninety six as Harold Nathan braun Hutt. And if you
know anything about Arian 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
(32:52):
as a member. Yeah. So that 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 Arian.
It also outed him as a non Arian, as a
Jewish person born Jewish to Jewish parents, about as Jewish
(33:12):
as you can possibly get aside from being um 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
(33:32):
released as 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 intracted
as he was before and still was always a part
of the organization's conferences and stuff like that. Yeah, and
(33:55):
he was. It wasn't just the Arian Nations he uh
In the Washington Post, says the U S Attorney Thomas Bauer.
U there was a weapons case in five against a
member of the clan Um Grand Dragon Dale Rouch. Yeah,
it was in nineteen eighty. I think that the transaction happened, okay,
(34:18):
but the weapons case was in five and Van braun
Hut 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 the okay, yes, and
this is a grand wizard of the clan, I believe, right, yes,
So the reason I pointed out that it would happened
(34:40):
in nineteen eighty, the year before the Washington Post had
had um drummed up in that nine 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, this is
this weird dual life. This guy is living like born
and raised jew respecting his Jewish parents funeral wishes and
(35:03):
burial wishes, and then months later helping a grand Wizard
of the KKK by 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 big one to punch,
you know. Yeah, so he didn't actually, Um, he would
(35:26):
do licensing deals over the years, I saw he ran
his business probably smartly to do that, uh, 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. Um.
There was one called Larmie Limited, one called Basic Fund,
one called Educational Insights. There may have been more. Today
(35:49):
it resides with Big Time Toys. But um, 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, um,
it was just some story that this angry neighbor cooked
up to slander his name. Other ones have said, yeah,
(36:12):
you know what, Um, everyone kind of knew about it,
but we're not gonna we're not gonna take that out
on the sea monkeys, right. Um. 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
(36:32):
he was doing in his private life personally themselves, like
the guy who was the president of Basic fund which
that's one of the worst names for a toy company. Basic.
It's like, don't get too excited, this is just Basic fun.
That was They had a spin off company called Minimal Enjoyment,
right he he Um got the license or his company
(36:53):
got the license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and
marketing sea monkeys, and um he he apparently asked von
braun Hut like, is this true? And von braun had
told him no, there's this developerman 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
(37:14):
about that um annual rally at the Area Nation Compound
in Idaho and said that Harold von braun Hud had
been a speaker there. So the guy from Basic Funds like,
it's it. I'm done with your contracts broken. Yeah, I
mean that did happen sometimes over the years. Uh, and
other times you know, people I guess money talks, so
(37:36):
they were willing to put up with it. Yeah, yep,
it's crazy. He um. 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. So I
guess it was a time when, you know, pre Internet,
pre social media, where you could kind of get away
(37:56):
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 a beloved American icon. Yeah, like
people just look the other way on the fact that
(38:17):
you're a white supremacist. You know, it's it's bizarre, but
that's 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 thousand's from
the all was that oh no, no, no, that was
from two thousand and eleven. The other one was, um
oh yeah, yeah, that was when he had currently the license.
(38:40):
He 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 drawing 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 skinny pot bellied uh King Queen, Prince
(39:04):
and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed them
up but capes on them and made a new jingle
and uh, 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 um
von Or Harold Braun had a patent on it was
one of his last patents. It was a a watch
(39:24):
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
(39:44):
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's 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.
(40:04):
Read this article. It's called the Sea Monkeys and the
White Supremacist. It was in the l A Times on
October one, two thousand, written by Tamarrow Brod, who did
a pretty good job of like just some good old
fashioned like um like like footwork or leg work, going
to to to pound the beat, pound the beat with
(40:25):
the 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 gonna come back and we're talking about
we're gonna 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 chuck self. Sh alright, So we know what happened? Actually,
(41:07):
how did he die? I didn't even see that. I
didn't see that either. Um, he died in two thousand three,
but I'm not sure why. All right, So he died, Yeah,
that's true. But he left behind his wife, Yawanda uh
Signarelli von braun Hutt. Did you lock her up? Oh? Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
(41:28):
she was. She was an actress. Uh, she was sort
of a sort of like a pin up bombshell b
movie actress, is fair ish. I had also seen her
movies as described as adult films as well. Um, she
was in a movie. I gotta see this one. It's
(41:48):
called Love After Death and it's a softcore zombie flick
from the sixties. Yeah. Um, 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
(42:09):
this side of him. So I don't know she's being
on the level or if she's just um, 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
Washington Post article, but his first wife was contacted and
interviewed for it, and she was like, what are you
(42:30):
guys talking about? Really? Yeah? So who knows. Maybe he
did just keep that He was clearly somebody who could
compartmentalize the different parts of his personality. So maybe maybe
he really did just leave leave the wives out of it. Man,
How how could you not know something like that's crazy,
just going going to Idaho on my yearly trip. Yeah,
(42:51):
that's weird. He always goes to Idaho and the Aryan
nation assembles, all right. So um, Yolanda Signare Levon 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
(43:12):
she is um, she's she's she's broke. Basically, she has
no electricity, no running water, and she has been in
uh been an illegal battle with Big Time Toys and
their chief executive Sam Harwell for basically several years, trying
(43:35):
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?
So yeah, so um, so Yolanda braun Hutt has she's
(43:56):
got kind of like a great gardens thing going on
right now, get 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
(44:19):
that company, Big Time Toys, where they would handle the
packaging and the distribution, and her company, her own little
company UM would handle making the actual sea monkeys that
that that were that were put into the packaging that
Big Time Toys sold. Right, So Big Time Toys would
(44:39):
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. Should have
done my Jolana voice. Yeah, let's hear. I don't know
what she sounds like. I pitched Italian stereotype. No no, no,
(45:04):
uh she It would have been like three different groups
of people if um she she basically said, we have
the secret formula for 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
(45:26):
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, UM, you know what,
all these payments we've been making to you, um for
(45:46):
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 points. So there are
which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should
been separate payments, if I understand this correctly. But I mean,
when somebody does that, what are you gonna do? You
gotta go sue them, And that's what they're doing, and
(46:09):
they're bleeding this lady dry at least as far as
this this New York Times UM profile is concerned. Uh.
And I mean, if you get into a fight like
that and you don't have the money, you can lose.
So this is a this could be a sad end
to the sea monkey um saga, because here's the other problem.
(46:30):
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
own the Sea Monkey brand. And it turned out that
in this court case, um, 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.
(46:52):
So apparently if you're buying, if you buy a currently
a Sea Monkey package, you're getting Time Toys packaging, and um,
Chinese knockoff see monkey packets which don't work. Apparently, I
went and looked at Amazon reviews and almost all of
(47:12):
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. Um,
it's sort of ironic that they ended up creating the
special breed essentially that worked, and that ended up being
there undoing. Because in court, in the affidavit, the leader
(47:36):
this Harwell guy, whose wife, by the way, is the head.
She's a speaker of the House of the Tennessee House
of Representatives. So yeah, they're they're a power family all
the way around, not to be trifled with. In his affidavit,
he says he outsourced the sea monkeys to China and
says there are seven recognized species of our timmy a
(47:57):
brine shrimp, and this is not one of them. So
because they had created their own, uh 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 they made. Well, no,
(48:21):
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
there Mother Nature's own China, but they're not the ones
that are working, right, I got you. So it's just
a mess. But then still doesn't that like raise questions
about how you could use the sea monkey's names? That's
what I wondered. But I guess if they had the
(48:42):
license to use the sea monkey's name because they were
in charge of packaging and distribution, 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. Um. But you know,
(49:05):
his wife says she didn't know anything about that, and
she's going broke and has 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? Fam widow of the white nationalist. Yeah, you
know what I predict, the chuck. I predict that Sea Monkeys,
(49:27):
the brand will ultimately rise about this, that it will
it will survive this somehow and still be around 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
(49:47):
quite a story. There'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, uh pomp
(50:08):
paii Pompeian lemons. 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. Uh. And I used 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
(50:31):
to be the size of your head. However, those gigantic
lemons are actually called cedri and are more for show
than anything. They're called cedri the entertainer. 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 better. Definitely
(50:52):
not something you keep around for lemonade. Just something I
wanted to share. Thanks for ruining everything for me. Uh
And also another thought the other day in the car,
have you either of you just said no when one
of you asked for a commercial break? But it'd be
funny if one of you just said, nah, we've come close.
(51:14):
Have we have? Haven't we? I don't know. Did 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 from Matt McDonald, who has
a software developer at Neo Cloud. Thanks a lot, Matt, um.
I think I was kind of disappointed to read that
email originally, but whatever. I guess you gotta just live
(51:37):
with reality, right, You've made an enemy today. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with us and ruin
our reality like Matt did, you can tweet to us.
I met joshuam Clark. There's also an s Y s
K podcast Twitter handle. I also have a website called
are You Series Clark dot com. Chuck your Friend Chuck
is at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(51:59):
There's also a book dot com slash Stuff you Should
Know site. You can send all of us, including Jerry,
an email to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Stuff Works dot com. Mhm
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. 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
(00:22):
sea monkeys. Jerry is mama see monkey. Yes, she's got
a little blonde bob hair do going on. And I
guess we're baby sea monkeys. I guess. Yeah, that's that's cool. Well,
let's some we'll we'll let the dad no exist. Okay,
we're brothers, that's right. I think that's a good move
(00:45):
with a non existent father, which really explains a lot
about us. Nonexistent sea monkey father no less so chuck Um,
I realized that I don't know something about you, which
is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
And or sea monkey brothers. We we are. We know
a lot about one another. We know one another smells um, looks, scowls,
(01:09):
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, um, because remember I
read Archie and Richie Rich. Oh yes, yeah, yeah yeah,
(01:31):
and I wasn't so well. Here's a couple of things
I read Archie and Richie Rich growing up, and UM
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. Uh.
(01:54):
She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was I had
sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV who lived
in a and then old school granny who lived in
a house in the country. And so granny Granny Bryant
didn't have TV or anything like that. But what she
did have in the back room was a bunch of
(02:16):
my dad and uncle um Ed's old toys and comic
books from when they were kids. So I think the
mainly Uncle Eddie, so I got. I had a big
stack of comics from my guests the nineteen sixties, uh
that were like Man from Uncle Um. I'm trying to read.
I'm trying to think of a few more. No superhero stuff,
(02:39):
but just those weird sort of. I guess it wasn't weird,
but man from Uncle is only when 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. So you
(03:02):
made your way through that stack of multiple times, oh
many many times, Like I remember the ads, I remember,
I remember everything about him. So then you remember, obviously,
I think you probably knew where I was going with
us from the outset. You remember the ads for the
sea monkeys. Then I remember sea monkeys, remember X ray specs,
(03:23):
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 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
(03:45):
on and a turtleneck and he just looked like he
was ready to get mellow, you know. Oh you know
the other one too, was the Charles Atlas workout thing.
Do you remember that? Yeah, where the pound weekly gets
stand kicked in his face. Totally. Yeah, that's really playing
on some fifteen year old insecurities and it worked. And
(04:06):
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 um, I think I've
asked you before the if you had ever had bonkers
there like these fruit shooes they were like just the
superior Starburst. And there was a comic book ad in
(04:27):
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 um,
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 I've always got that
Bonker's comic book ad in there too, and a lot
(04:49):
of bubble bubble um 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 Monkeys
And 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, of course,
which were pretty hilarious. Sure, but now that I don't
(05:11):
think they had any like actual ads in them. They
were just strictly subscription based. So in that Sea Monkey's aid,
if you'll remember correctly, and I think for many decades
it was virtually the same thing. It was this kind
of group, this tribe of humanoid figures. It was a family.
(05:32):
But but exactly what kind of family they were is
really up for debate. So they're they were kind of lanky,
like stringy ropey arms and legs, paunchy tummies, naked is
the day they were born, webbed feet, webb tails, Like
the end of their tail was like webbed, which if
(05:52):
you look closely, I think was probably just a device
to cover Dad's junk in the In the illustration, they're like,
we need something on the end of their tail there, buddy. Uh.
And this this just like this classic illustration of the
sea monkeys that apparently was done by this guy named
Joe Orlando Magazine Yeah, he's from Mad Magazine. Creepy Magazine
(06:15):
is another one. He ran some comic lines at d
C Comics. Was 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 right now. Look at that. It's like unchanged, I know.
And what's great too, is that we'll talk about later.
(06:36):
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
(06:59):
they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea monkey family,
kings of the fish bowl and only inhabitants. Actually, So
if you write so you can proclaim yourself the royal family,
you mean, I have done that at our house. So. Um,
if you look closely at some of those ads, they say, um,
there's like a little fine print that says these are
(07:19):
caricatures of sea monkeys. Is not actually what your sea
monkeys look like 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,
(07:42):
of course, well sea monkeys, uh as, sea monkeys don't exist.
But they are real little living creatures that you buy,
have shipped in an envelope back in those days, in
an envelope to your home, and they are actually their
(08:02):
own things. So what they are ultimately is something called
artemia or Brian shrimp. But the guy who ended up
calling them sea monkeys was actually well within his right
to call him 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
(08:24):
expert named Di Augustino. I can't remember his first name.
I think when you have a name like de Gistino,
you can just go by that. So so de Gistino
and this guy named Harold von Broughton or brought bron Hot, right,
they got together and they actually took Brian shrimp and
(08:45):
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
(09:09):
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 no clapping
and squealing with original Brian shrimp, right. So through these
(09:31):
cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp. Brian shrimp are
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, um 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,
(09:53):
they basically do the same thing that's harder grades too.
They enter into the state of suspended animation UM. A
desk hated 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 there basically their brin
shrimp eggs is what it is, or what they are,
(10:15):
and then you get purified water. Put him in there,
and I believe there's a growth formula as well. Right, Yeah,
that's like their food. It's like spilina 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
(10:37):
only one that worked, and it was owned owned by
this Van Broughten character. Van Broughten braun Hutt. Braun Hut.
I 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 um. Until he died
in two thousand three, Harald von braun Hutt and his
wife Yolanda were the only two people on the planet
(10:59):
who knew what this special formula was that created those connections.
Because you remember, you've got sea monkeys little Brian shrimp
that are in the state of cryptobiosis, 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
(11:22):
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 name. They were originally marketed under. Its not
the best, not the best name, no uh, and it
is It's weird that um that name was chosen because
(11:45):
it turns out that Harold von braun Hutt is or
was a marketing genius. UM 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.
(12:08):
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 was which
(12:28):
told this fantastical story. I mean that's the whole point.
It wasn't just like Edwater in your on set, I
told the whole story of sea monkeys. Yeah. It said
things like, you can your sea monkeys can be hypnotized.
You can train them to play baseball, Um, you can
race them. They're they're like they love to race. There
all sorts of things. You can basically train them into
(12:48):
a pack of friendly seals, I think is the way
they put it. It talked about like their um courtship
and reproduction and just all sorts of stuff like it was, Yeah,
this guy is just basically do you remember that that
treatment that George Lucas wrote about Wookies and and Chewbacca's
planet that got turned into the Star Wars Christmas special.
(13:08):
This is the exact same thing. But this is the
Sea Monkeys world, right, I would like to see 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, UM
starring how He Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get
any better. Like who else would have been better than
(13:31):
how He Mandel For that, it was Howie Mandel. He
produced it as well, along with the Chioto brothers, who
were known for making killer clowns from outer space. 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 and that's what they did.
(13:51):
It was not 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
(14:12):
a wink and a nod to other adults. It was
a weird, weird, weird show. Yeah it was. I didn't
see it, and I only watched like a bit of
one episode. I didn't see enough to judge the whole eleven.
I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and
Marty Croft without the LSD, right, it was with PCP instead.
(14:36):
That's how it struck me. I was like, these people
are on angel dust. Yeah. But all this to say
that it was 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
(14:58):
cool that something they got in the mail really had
come to life. Yeah, for sure, and you could raise
them and after you know, after some tinkering Um von
braun Hut, Um managed to get them to live for
a while. So these were like pets to to the kids.
Plus I also think Chuck I suspect and this is
a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success.
Um von braun Hut when he started to market these
(15:21):
things early on, he was following immediately in the wake
of something called instant fish that I think Whamo 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
(15:43):
in a in a stroke of genius, said, you know what,
I'm gonna 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, kids,
come look at my minivan. I've got a bunch of
stuff for you to choose from. Right. Yeah, Well, the
comic book, saying was a genius. Um how many like
three three and a half million ads a year? Was
(16:06):
at it, three hundred three million pages a year? And
now though so most of those were two page inserts.
So that's a hundred and fifty issues of a 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 ninety four, and I don't
(16:30):
know exactly when it stopped, but it was well into
the nineties that there were sea monkey um 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 the point that I was getting away
from um that I wanted to make. I think one
of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was because it
(16:51):
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 would take you to the store or
anything like that. You can't you You contracted with this
this strange man to buy these Brian shrimp from him,
(17:11):
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, uh or or you know
you you maybe got the funds from your lemonade stand
and converted that to a cash bond bearer bond. I
(17:33):
don't know any of that stuff is, but yeah, so
you probably had little assistance for mom and or maybe
you put a dollar in an envelope. I'll bet many
kids did. I wonder if Braunhud sent the change the
change back, it was like, I'm keeping this change, kid,
just to teach you a lesson not to send a
dollar bill in the mail anymore, because you can't send
change in the mail, right right, So I mean suffice
(17:56):
to say, see, 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 patents on everything. Like you know, we
mentioned the X ray specs, uh and that great great
ad of of the guy looking at his hand or
(18:19):
the or the uh sexist misogynistic ad of him leering
at a woman in a dress. Uh. 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
(18:42):
it did was it basically projected two overlapping images of
the same thing, so that edges around the outside of it,
we're just kind of fuzzier than the middle. Basically supposedly
that was what an X ray of your hand looked like. Yeah,
so that that the case of um fraud. Yeah, A
(19:04):
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, uh, which basically
means nothing. He sold nothing successfully, right. It was the
(19:26):
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, that they would
remain invisible. Yeah, and that's I think that is the
distinction that makes it not fraud As he basically said,
you're not gonna sing an hanging in this bowl, and
and that was that. What else did he do? Um?
(19:49):
He had He invented balder dash. He also invented those
um dolls eyes where you lay your doll back and
its eyes closed. He invented those. Yeah, he invented that
that technology, which is it 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 UM.
(20:12):
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 talent manager like Broadway
Danny Rose was a talent manager. Okay, I don't know
that just bum would go along with it? What is that?
Is that? What? What's that from? The name is familiar,
(20:33):
but I don't know. It was a Woody Allen movie
where he played there was it was a talent manager
that managed like you know, um, people like this that
with 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 say? Well?
(20:55):
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, no, that wasn't that was that
was him and he had his own act. Oh god, Okay,
did you see the guy who who the the high
dive guy? Did you see his jump? No? Oh my, okay,
there's a guy named on real Lemouth. I believe he Yeah,
(21:20):
on Red Lamouth. If you go look him up h
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 seventies from the looks of it,
where he's opening up for an evil kinevel act in
a parking lot and god knows where in New Jersey,
and he climbs up this ladder, a forty ft ladder,
(21:41):
and below beneath is one of these tiny little kiddie
pools filled with like eighteen inches of water. And this guy,
who who is clearly in his mid seventies maybe older,
dives forty ft into eighteen inches of water in a
kiddie pool belly first. He does basically a belly flop
and immediately stands up with like tata. It's one of
(22:04):
the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life.
And and this guy, Harold von braun Hutt, managed that
guy back in the day. Uh yeah, Okay, he wasn't
a He was a magician who worked under the name
the Great Tlepo. That's a pretty good name. And he
also inmen in something called the Director Mat, which was
this device where you punch in your destination and like
(22:28):
your 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, 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
(22:49):
some successful useful things. So he had this other thing
that you could get for like uh and it was
actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped
at a Guardia airport 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
(23:09):
the UM what what coo? Yoga agent M five, Yeah,
the kiyoga agent and five. It's basically a telescoping metal whip. Um.
You know you've seen the telescoping batons and things that
cops can use. I guess anybody can use them. And
do actually had one of those for a little while
(23:30):
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 and if anyone ever reaches their hand in the window,
then they're gonna get a wrapped knuckle. Smart. I don't
know where it went though. I didn't telescope properly, so
I was like, that's probably not good. No, it's not
(23:50):
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're just turning and
running is way better? Well? Yeah, just I went back
to plan A, which is poop, poop my pants and
cry right, hopefully that works now once the punch of
guy who's just pooped his pants, you know. All right,
so none of the but at least um, so this
(24:13):
M five telescoping water whip. Um, all right, this is
where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this
up right before the ad break. Um, because it turns
out that Mr van bro Hud, Mr von brown Hut
was perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist aryan Nazi. Sure
(24:41):
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 up
to Chuck self. You shoot stuff, you shoo, okay, Chuck,
(25:11):
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, the Yes, his own Mouth,
(25:31):
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 Arian Nations out of Idaho, which was one
(25:54):
of the original white hate groups in the United States.
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
(26:14):
having been turned around and given to the Aryan nation.
And here in 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
(26:36):
any money going to Ariyan Nation. So I feel horrible
that my money went to you, which you turn in
turn gave to the Arian Nation. Right, However, this M
five was uh. There was a man named Richard Butler. Um.
This guy was the real piece of human garbage. He
was a founder of the Arian Nation. Yeah, he was
(26:57):
the worst. He's not with us anymore, thank fully, but
he he was a very bad man. And he was
brought brought up on trial. And basically this h M
five little uh telescoping whip that was invented by von
braun Hut that was specifically UH used that that that
(27:20):
product and proceeds from that specifically went to a fund
to help out Richard Butler. So we know that. Yeah,
everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt um pretty
swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties,
Richard Butler is brought up along with I think fourteen
(27:41):
or fifteen other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges basically
trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, UM, trying
to start a race war. They were they had some
serious charges against them. They were eventually acquitted of these charges.
But but as part of this defense fund. In Aryan
Nation newsletter, UM, Richard Butler talks about the Kyoga Agent
(28:06):
M five as a great you know, um, a great
tool for every Arian 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 Ariyan Nation.
And the inventor of this project product has pledged that
twenty five of those sixty dollars will be given to
(28:29):
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
UM hate group. Yeah, and this was just like the
beginning of the can of worms, uh, which he did
not invent the can of worms, but he should have.
It was the beginning of that being open because uh,
(28:51):
like you said, late late eighties, what was the eight
eight I think in the Washington Post basically got ahold
of this story, did some investigating and found owned that
he was involved in quote some of the most extreme
racist and anti Semitic organizations in the country. Um. But
here's the deal, Like there are quotes from his mouth
(29:12):
that say things about uh inscrutable, slanty Korean eyes when
dealing with Korean shop owners and talking about uh Jews
and black people, like literal quotes. Yet when he's finally contacted,
this is great article that we kind of started with.
Um was when he was still alive. He would deny
(29:34):
that this was that this was him, and but not
try and clear it up or anything. Basically just say
that's a bunch of bunk um. There was 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
(29:55):
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. Uh 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
(30:17):
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 tipped the Washington Post off to this
or not. This is already like pretty well known in
(30:39):
the toy industry and pretty well documented. Like it wasn't
just that this um Harold von braun Hutt gave money
to the Aran Nation, Like he would go to their
annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself. He
would um. He would beak at some of their their
(31:01):
um conferences and apparently not very well received. No, he would.
He would kind of go off on topics that the
Arians 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
(31:21):
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 Area Nation. The closest thing
to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler
saying that the inventor of this has pledged twenty five
dollars per but the very fact that he was basically
allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself strongly suggests
(31:45):
that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and
legal defense fund pledges and and apparently a former spokesman
for the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist,
he says, um poke out about Harold von braun Hunt
and said he didn't know exactly how much he gave,
but he gave a lot, and he gave pretty frequently
(32:06):
when he was asked. Right. So things get a little
weirder here because it turns out that von braun Hut
was actually Jewish. He was born to Jeanette Cohen and
Edward braun Hut, not von braun Hutt at that little
Vaughan to uh, I guess germanize him uh. And he
(32:30):
was born in New York City on March thirty, first,
ninety six as Harold Nathan braun Hutt. And if you
know anything about Arian 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
(32:52):
as a member. Yeah. So that 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 Arian.
It also outed him as a non Arian, as a
Jewish person born Jewish to Jewish parents, about as Jewish
(33:12):
as you can possibly get aside from being um 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
(33:32):
released as 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 intracted
as he was before and still was always a part
of the organization's conferences and stuff like that. Yeah, and
(33:55):
he was. It wasn't just the Arian Nations he uh
In the Washington Post, says the U S Attorney Thomas Bauer.
U there was a weapons case in five against a
member of the clan Um Grand Dragon Dale Rouch. Yeah,
it was in nineteen eighty. I think that the transaction happened, okay,
(34:18):
but the weapons case was in five and Van braun
Hut 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 the okay, yes, and
this is a grand wizard of the clan, I believe, right, yes,
So the reason I pointed out that it would happened
(34:40):
in nineteen eighty, the year before the Washington Post had
had um drummed up in that nine 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, this is
this weird dual life. This guy is living like born
and raised jew respecting his Jewish parents funeral wishes and
(35:03):
burial wishes, and then months later helping a grand Wizard
of the KKK by 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 big one to punch,
you know. Yeah, so he didn't actually, Um, he would
(35:26):
do licensing deals over the years, I saw he ran
his business probably smartly to do that, uh, 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. Um.
There was one called Larmie Limited, one called Basic Fund,
one called Educational Insights. There may have been more. Today
(35:49):
it resides with Big Time Toys. But um, 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, um,
it was just some story that this angry neighbor cooked
up to slander his name. Other ones have said, yeah,
(36:12):
you know what, Um, everyone kind of knew about it,
but we're not gonna we're not gonna take that out
on the sea monkeys, right. Um. 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
(36:32):
he was doing in his private life personally themselves, like
the guy who was the president of Basic fund which
that's one of the worst names for a toy company. Basic.
It's like, don't get too excited, this is just Basic fun.
That was They had a spin off company called Minimal Enjoyment,
right he he Um got the license or his company
(36:53):
got the license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and
marketing sea monkeys, and um he he apparently asked von
braun Hut like, is this true? And von braun had
told him no, there's this developerman 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
(37:14):
about that um annual rally at the Area Nation Compound
in Idaho and said that Harold von braun Hud had
been a speaker there. So the guy from Basic Funds like,
it's it. I'm done with your contracts broken. Yeah, I
mean that did happen sometimes over the years. Uh, and
other times you know, people I guess money talks, so
(37:36):
they were willing to put up with it. Yeah, yep,
it's crazy. He um. 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. So I
guess it was a time when, you know, pre Internet,
pre social media, where you could kind of get away
(37:56):
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 a beloved American icon. Yeah, like
people just look the other way on the fact that
(38:17):
you're a white supremacist. You know, it's it's bizarre, but
that's 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 thousand's from
the all was that oh no, no, no, that was
from two thousand and eleven. The other one was, um
oh yeah, yeah, that was when he had currently the license.
(38:40):
He 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 drawing 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 skinny pot bellied uh King Queen, Prince
(39:04):
and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed them
up but capes on them and made a new jingle
and uh, 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 um
von Or Harold Braun had a patent on it was
one of his last patents. It was a a watch
(39:24):
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
(39:44):
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's 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.
(40:04):
Read this article. It's called the Sea Monkeys and the
White Supremacist. It was in the l A Times on
October one, two thousand, written by Tamarrow Brod, who did
a pretty good job of like just some good old
fashioned like um like like footwork or leg work, going
to to to pound the beat, pound the beat with
(40:25):
the 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 gonna come back and we're talking about
we're gonna 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 chuck self. Sh alright, So we know what happened? Actually,
(41:07):
how did he die? I didn't even see that. I
didn't see that either. Um, he died in two thousand three,
but I'm not sure why. All right, So he died, Yeah,
that's true. But he left behind his wife, Yawanda uh
Signarelli von braun Hutt. Did you lock her up? Oh? Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
(41:28):
she was. She was an actress. Uh, she was sort
of a sort of like a pin up bombshell b
movie actress, is fair ish. I had also seen her
movies as described as adult films as well. Um, she
was in a movie. I gotta see this one. It's
(41:48):
called Love After Death and it's a softcore zombie flick
from the sixties. Yeah. Um, 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
(42:09):
this side of him. So I don't know she's being
on the level or if she's just um, 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
Washington Post article, but his first wife was contacted and
interviewed for it, and she was like, what are you
(42:30):
guys talking about? Really? Yeah? So who knows. Maybe he
did just keep that He was clearly somebody who could
compartmentalize the different parts of his personality. So maybe maybe
he really did just leave leave the wives out of it. Man,
How how could you not know something like that's crazy,
just going going to Idaho on my yearly trip. Yeah,
(42:51):
that's weird. He always goes to Idaho and the Aryan
nation assembles, all right. So um, Yolanda Signare Levon 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
(43:12):
she is um, she's she's she's broke. Basically, she has
no electricity, no running water, and she has been in
uh been an illegal battle with Big Time Toys and
their chief executive Sam Harwell for basically several years, trying
(43:35):
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?
So yeah, so um, so Yolanda braun Hutt has she's
(43:56):
got kind of like a great gardens thing going on
right now, get 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
(44:19):
that company, Big Time Toys, where they would handle the
packaging and the distribution, and her company, her own little
company UM would handle making the actual sea monkeys that
that that were that were put into the packaging that
Big Time Toys sold. Right, So Big Time Toys would
(44:39):
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. Should have
done my Jolana voice. Yeah, let's hear. I don't know
what she sounds like. I pitched Italian stereotype. No no, no,
(45:04):
uh she It would have been like three different groups
of people if um she she basically said, we have
the secret formula for 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
(45:26):
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, UM, you know what,
all these payments we've been making to you, um for
(45:46):
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 points. So there are
which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should
been separate payments, if I understand this correctly. But I mean,
when somebody does that, what are you gonna do? You
gotta go sue them, And that's what they're doing, and
(46:09):
they're bleeding this lady dry at least as far as
this this New York Times UM profile is concerned. Uh.
And I mean, if you get into a fight like
that and you don't have the money, you can lose.
So this is a this could be a sad end
to the sea monkey um saga, because here's the other problem.
(46:30):
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
own the Sea Monkey brand. And it turned out that
in this court case, um, 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.
(46:52):
So apparently if you're buying, if you buy a currently
a Sea Monkey package, you're getting Time Toys packaging, and um,
Chinese knockoff see monkey packets which don't work. Apparently, I
went and looked at Amazon reviews and almost all of
(47:12):
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. Um,
it's sort of ironic that they ended up creating the
special breed essentially that worked, and that ended up being
there undoing. Because in court, in the affidavit, the leader
(47:36):
this Harwell guy, whose wife, by the way, is the head.
She's a speaker of the House of the Tennessee House
of Representatives. So yeah, they're they're a power family all
the way around, not to be trifled with. In his affidavit,
he says he outsourced the sea monkeys to China and
says there are seven recognized species of our timmy a
(47:57):
brine shrimp, and this is not one of them. So
because they had created their own, uh 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 they made. Well, no,
(48:21):
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
there Mother Nature's own China, but they're not the ones
that are working, right, I got you. So it's just
a mess. But then still doesn't that like raise questions
about how you could use the sea monkey's names? That's
what I wondered. But I guess if they had the
(48:42):
license to use the sea monkey's name because they were
in charge of packaging and distribution, 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. Um. But you know,
(49:05):
his wife says she didn't know anything about that, and
she's going broke and has 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? Fam widow of the white nationalist. Yeah, you
know what I predict, the chuck. I predict that Sea Monkeys,
(49:27):
the brand will ultimately rise about this, that it will
it will survive this somehow and still be around 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
(49:47):
quite a story. There'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, uh pomp
(50:08):
paii Pompeian lemons. 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. Uh. And I used 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
(50:31):
to be the size of your head. However, those gigantic
lemons are actually called cedri and are more for show
than anything. They're called cedri the entertainer. 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 better. Definitely
(50:52):
not something you keep around for lemonade. Just something I
wanted to share. Thanks for ruining everything for me. Uh
And also another thought the other day in the car,
have you either of you just said no when one
of you asked for a commercial break? But it'd be
funny if one of you just said, nah, we've come close.
(51:14):
Have we have? Haven't we? I don't know. Did 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 from Matt McDonald, who has
a software developer at Neo Cloud. Thanks a lot, Matt, um.
I think I was kind of disappointed to read that
email originally, but whatever. I guess you gotta just live
(51:37):
with reality, right, You've made an enemy today. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with us and ruin
our reality like Matt did, you can tweet to us.
I met joshuam Clark. There's also an s Y s
K podcast Twitter handle. I also have a website called
are You Series Clark dot com. Chuck your Friend Chuck
is at Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(51:59):
There's also a book dot com slash Stuff you Should
Know site. You can send all of us, including Jerry,
an email to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Stuff Works dot com. Mhm
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Josh Clark
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