Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Sea Monkey magnate dead at 77
Harold von Braunhut, who ingeniously marketed one of the ugliest and most boring aquatic creatures in existence -- the almost-invisible brine shrimp -- as" Sea Monekys," died last month. "...Mr. von Braunhut's piece de resistance was Sea Monkeys -- which come from dried-up lake bottoms, not the sea, and are not monkeys but brine shrimp. His extravagant claims for the crustaceans -- for example, that they come back from the dead and that they can be trained and hypnotized-- are convincing because they are sort of true. (The shrimp do follow light.)
Billions of shrimp have been sold, not to mention a Sea Monkey aphrodisiac and a wrist watch filled with swimming shrimp. There are Web sites for sea monkey fans; CBS briefly had a Sea Monkeys series on Saturday mornings; 400 million of them went into space with John Glenn in 1998; and, for the lazy, a new Sea Monkey video game allows a player to 'virtually' care for a shrimp colony, lest the animals 'virtually' die." Link (thanks Rael!)
posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:45:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments
