The Dark Past of Sea Monkeys

This is the story of how a tiny, magical creature was transformed into a cultural phenomenon by inventor, marketing genius and complicated eccentric Harold von Braunhut. Full of fun facts (both charming and disturbing), Just Add Water is a colorful short film about a half-century of marketing directly to children, the force of nostalgia in pop culture, and an unlikely meeting of flim-flam and hard science. A film by Penny Lane.

NATIONAL SEA MONKEY DAY

National Sea Monkey Day is observed each year on May 16. Most of us have memories of waiting for our mail order shipment of these magical creatures. The delivery usually contained the small “aquarium-like” hatching kit for them to live and grow in.

Sea Monkeys are a type of “Artemia” (brine shrimp). They got their name because of their monkey-tail look.
Following the popularity of the ant farms, Harold von Braunhut invented the “Sea Monkeys” and hatching kits in 1957. He did most of his advertising through comic books. He once said, “I think I bought something like 3.2 million pages of comic book advertising a year. It worked beautifully.”
These little crustaceans have made their appearances on television shows including Spin City, Roseanne, Night Court, South Park, The Simpsons, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and Desperate Housewives.

Sea Monkeys went into space with astronaut John Glenn on October 29, 1998, aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. They returned to Earth after spending nine days in space and the eggs hatched eight weeks later, apparently unaffected by their travels.

HOW TO OBSERVE

Use #NationalSeaMonkeyDay to post on social media.

HISTORY

Our research was unable to find the origin of National Sea Monkey Day.