Monkey Sea Monkey Do
Maybe this ad is still featured prominently in comic books, I haven’t checked….but for sure back in the early 60’s this ad was on the back of every comic book I ever read as a kid, tempting and tantalizing my imagination.
And, oh, how beguiling the ad was! I realize you can’t read our little reproduction here very well but look at the picture. The ad described how you too could have your very own colony of Sea Monkeys, to train and to love.
Well now. I desperately longed to send off for this offer, but a buck and a quarter back then was probably equivalent to 20 or 30 bucks today. And my parents weren’t about to cough up the dough for me to squander on some mail order pig in a poke.
So I never got to experience the wonder and thrill of having my very own Sea Monkey family….
I somehow managed to survive this crushing disappointment without undue psychological damage. I completely forgot about Sea Monkeys for years, until I set up a salt water aquarium when I was a teenager and discovered that “Sea Monkeys” were actually brine shrimp, something I was feeding to my fish.
The brine shrimp eggs I got at the aquarium shop hatched into tiny crustaceans about the size of fleas. My fish surely liked them, but I thought back to how much I’d wanted those Sea Monkeys as a child, and how disappointed I would have been at hatching out a bunch of aquatic fleas.
Somewhere along the line I also learned that the method to “train your Sea Monkeys” consisted of shining a flashlight beam through the tank and watching the Sea Monkeys follow the light.
Big Whoop, as they say.
However, that image popped into my head recently, along with some amorphous and anarchistic thoughts about how we humans are just like Sea Monkeys. We swallow what we are told by the ruling elites and allow stupid, fiscally irresponsible and socially and ecologically destructive political agendas just as if we are brainless brine shrimp following a light beam….we go where we are pointed like a swarm of Sea Monkeys!
This mental image made me laugh and inspired me to idly google Sea Monkeys the other day. I expected to find no more than a mention in Wikipedia.
But no! Sea Monkeys are bigger than ever! I was astounded to discover that Sea Monkeys have captured the imagination of millions, with websites, art work, fancy aquariums, and many, many mentions in various media. It was absolutely mind boggling!
I felt like I’d fallen completely out of the loop of cultural zeitgeist!
And sadly, they don’t wear little crowns.
The arty ad depiction was the brainchild of famous illustrator Joe Orlando. Joe illustrated many comics and was at one time an artist and editor at the legendary Mad Magazine.
Joe was hired for this ad campaign by Harold von Braunhut, who invented the Sea Monkey product back in 1957. Ant Farms had become an extremely popular toy the year before, and Braunhut had the brilliant idea to promote an aquatic toy along the same lines with brine shrimp.
He initially called his product “Instant Life”, as brine shrimp can live in a dried state of suspended animation for many years until revived by adding water and food.
Von Braunhut brilliantly changed the name to Sea Monkeys in 1962. When Joe Orlando created the iconic Sea Monkey advertising image, a legend was born!
Also, it turns out I wasn’t just imagining that I saw a Sea Monkey ad on every freaking comic book I ever read ….von Braunhut said “I think I bought something like 3.2 million pages of comic book advertising a year. It worked beautifully.”
I bet it did, Mr. von Braunhut!
Harold von Braunhut has passed on now, but his legacy lives on greater and grander than ever. In fact, I feel compelled to finally assuage that childhood desire and get me some Sea Monkeys soon!
But which theme, which tank, to choose? There are some hard choices to make! Space ship. Under Water Sea Wrecks…there’s even a tank with a robo-diver that delivers the food, so your shrimp will eagerly respond to the little diver dude with the chow! (Apparently, they can be trained to respond to food as well as light. Still just like us humanoids, really)
And, Sea Monkeys inspire some pretty entertaining poetry…
Stephanie Kelley
Sea of Monkeylove
See a sea of monkeys
swimming swiftly in the brine
‘Tis the zen of fish bowl magic
which softly soothes the monkey mind
Monkey sea, monkey dew
Can you feel my love for you
Dew the morning droplets
have gathered ‘neath a broken tank
Like the great Titanic
my tiny shrimp hath sank
Monkey sea, monkey dew
Time to say goodbye to you
Where have all the monkeys gone?
To the zoo? Upon the vine?
Only a faded memory of love and
monkeys I can’t find
Monkey sea, monkey dew
Nothing left but love for you
Submitted by Susan Maltby
