Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: The Strange Story of Sea Monkeys

Transcript

Selects: The Strange Story of Sea Monkeys · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our episode on sea monkeys that came out in
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: March of twenty eighteen. Sea monkeys are one of those
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: things that you just take for granted when you're a kid.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: There's that one ad that was in every single issue
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of every single comic book, and for those of us
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to mail off to get them, they became
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: an even bigger part of your childhood when you got
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to watch them swim around in their cool little plastic tank.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: But sea monkeys have an even more amazing backstory than this,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: not just of toy fame, but also of intrigue too.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Hope you enjoy it.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. We are
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: swimmingly excited about this one because it is about sea monkeys.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Jerry is mama sea monkey.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, she's got her little blonde bob hairdo going on.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: And I guess we're baby sea monkeys.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that's cool. We'll let's we'll let the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: dad not exist. Okay, we're brothers, that's right. I think
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that's a good.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Move with a non existent father, which really explains a
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: lot about us.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Non existent sea monkey father no less. Yeah, So, Chuck,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I realized that I don't know something about you, which
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: is weird because we've been doing this for almost ten years.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: And we're Sea Monkey brothers.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: We are. We know a lot about one another. We
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: know one another.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Smells, looks, scowls, all sorts of stuff, right, triumphs, victories.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: One thing I don't know about you is whether you
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: were into comic books as a kid.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Well, glad you asked. I feel like we've talked about
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: this at some point, but maybe not. I yeah, we
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: have for sure, Okay, because remember I read Archie and
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: Richie Rich.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: And I wasn't Well, here's a couple of things. I
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: read Archie and Richie Rich growing up and didn't get
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: into the superhero comics much because I don't know why.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: But then, also, you don't know this part. We used
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: to go to visit my grandmother on my father's side.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: She was big time into Thor.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Granny Thor. She lived in Jackson, Tennessee, and it was.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: I had sort of the modern grandparents with cable TV
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: who lived in a condo, and then old school granny
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: who lived in a house in the country. And so
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: granted Granny Bryant didn't have TV or anything like that,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: but what she did have in the back room was
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: a bunch of my dad and Uncle Ed's old toys
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: and comic books from when they were kids. It's nice,
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: so I think they're mainly Uncle Eddie. So I got
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I had a big stack of comics from I guess
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties that were like Man from Uncle. I'm
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: trying to read. I'm trying to think of a few more.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: No superhero stuff, but just those weird sort of I
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: guess it wasn't weird, but Man from Uncle is the
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: only one I can remember.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: But it's a little weird.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Long story short is because that's all the entertainment we
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: had to ingest. We would my brother and I would
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: go back there and read those every year for years.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: That's pretty awesome, the same comics.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So you made your way through that stack multiple.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Times, oh many many times?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Gotcha?
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Like I remember the ads, I remember, I remember everything
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: about them.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: So then you remember, obviously, I think you probably knew
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: where I was going with this from the outset. You
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: remember the ads for the Sea Monkeys, then.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I remember Sea Monkeys, I remember for X ray specs, sure,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: which we'll get into. And I remember for sure all
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: the ads for like can you draw this parrot? Or pirate? Oh?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Remember that for the art school?
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah? What was that?
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I think they just took your money and then sent
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you a degree.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: For your art school.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Is that what it was?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So disappointing.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the turtle was pretty cool.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: He had like a Newsy camp on and a turtleneck
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and he just looked like he was ready to get mellow,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh you know. The other one too was the
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Charles Atlas workout thing. Do you remember that?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where the ninety eight pound weekling gets sand kicked
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: in his face. Totally man, Yeah, that's really playing on
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: some fifteen year old's insecurities and.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Worked Oh yeah, for sure. Sure, And what about you?
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I remember Sea Monkeys.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: There's one that always stuck out to me was a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Bonker's ad from the eighties. This would have been way
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: past your man from Uncle era comic books. But I
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: think I've asked you before if you'd ever had Bonkers,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: they are like these fruit. They were like just the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: superior Starburst. And there was a comic book ad in
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: there with like this like kind of crotchety old lady
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: in it, and I don't even remember the gist of it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I think maybe she was mad that the kid was
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: eating bonkers and enjoying it. I don't know, but I'll
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: never forget that comic for some reason, because the colors
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in it were just just perfect and they struck my
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: brain just right. So I've always got that Bonker's comic
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: book ad in there too, and a lot of bubble
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: bubbleum comic book ads are stuck in there as well.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Nothing that means anything really, and certainly nothing pertinent to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: this episode except for that Sea Monkey's ad.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you and I were also into Mad Magazine
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: big Time, which I believe was ad free, wasn't it.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: It was they had like those fake ads, oh yeah,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of course, which were pretty hilarious, sure, but now that
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think they had any like actual ads in them.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: They were just strictly subscription based, that's right. So in
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that Sea Monkey's ad, if you'll remember correctly, and I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: think for many decades. It was very actually the same thing.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: It was this kind of group, this tribe of humanoid figures.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It was a family, but exactly what kind of family
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: they were is really up for debate. So there they
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: were kind of lanky, like stringy, ropey arms and legs,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: paunchy tummies, naked is the day they were born, sure,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: webbed feet, webbed tails, Like the end of their tail
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: was like webbed, which if you look closely, I think
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: was probably just a device to cover dad's junk in
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the in the illustration, they were like, we need something
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: on the end of their tail there, buddy, And it's
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: just like this classic illustration of the sea monkeys that
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: apparently was done by this guy named Joe Orlando.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Mad Magazine.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's from Mad magazine. Creepy Magazine is another one. Uh,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: he ran some comic lines at DC Comics for allays
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: kind of a legend, but he's also extremely well known
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: outside of the comic world for having drawn that sea
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: monkey family.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'll get at it right now. Look
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: at that. It's like unchanged.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And what's great too, is if we'll talk about later,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: somebody some people went in and fiddled around with it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And if you look now, if you go to buy
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the sea monkeys now, they're basically back to the way
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: they were before.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, and we'll get to that too. You also
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: didn't mention the castle, which is kind of key because
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: somehow they have these little crown like heads and I
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: guess we're kings of the bowl.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I guess they were. Yeah, they were a royal sea
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: monkey family.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Kings of the fishbowl, and only inhabitants actually.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: So if you right, so you could proclaim yourself the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: royal family, you mean, And I have done that at
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: our house. So if you look closely at some of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: those ads, they say, there's like a little fine print
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: that says these are caricatures of sea monkeys. It's not
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: actually what your sea monkeys look like, or it's an
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: artist interpretation or something like that. And it turns out
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: that sea monkeys and just prepare for your childhood to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: blow away like so much dust in the wind, chuck,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: sea monkeys don't actually exist. There's no such thing. Yeah,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: did you know that already?
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Well, of course, well, sea monkeys, uh as, sea monkeys
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: don't exist, but they are real, little living creatures that
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: you buy, right, have shipped in an envelope back in
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: those days, in an envelope to your home.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: And they are actually their own things.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So what they are ultimately is something called artemia or
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Brian shrimp. Yes, but the guy who ended up calling
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: them sea monkeys was actually well within his right to
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: call them something different than just Brian shrimp, because they're
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: a hybrid version of Brian shrimp. The guy who invented
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: sea monkeys actually anchored along with a micro crustaceans expert
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: named Di Augustino.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I can't remember his first name.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: I think when you have a name like Degastino, you
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: can just go buy that.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So Degastino and this guy named Harold von Broughton or
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: braun Hot, right, they got together and they actually took
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Brian shrimp and made them into something different, a hybrid
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: version that we now know and love as sea monkeys.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the literal sea monkeys that you buy don't
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: exist in nature, right, They are a man made creation.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: I don't think we can get that through clearly enough,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: because it's pretty scientifically, it's pretty amazing. And they did
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: that because they couldn't find any of these Brian shrimp
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: varieties that would live through the shipping process and be
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: able to be essentially rehydrated and brought to life to
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: the delight of children. So they made them right and there's.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: No clapping and squealing with original Brian shrimp right now.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So through these cross breeding programs they made Brian shrimp.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Brian shrimp were already you could. I think you can
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: still go to pet stores and buy them. They're a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: type of food. They're a pet food, yeah, and all
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: they're just like tiny little micro crustaceans and they enter
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: into what's called cryptobiosis and they're basically if you'll remember
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: our tartar Grade episode, they basically do the same thing
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that tartagrades do. They enter into the state of suspended animation,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a desiccated state where they're just dried out and just
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: sitting there waiting for the conditions to be right to
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: basically come back to life. That's what sea monkeys are.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So you get this little package they're basically their
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Brian shrimp eggs is what it is, or what they are,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: and then you get purified water put them in there,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: and I believe there's a growth formula as well. Right.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like their food. It's like spirrillina and yeast, I.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Believe, right, but it's no one truly knows what the
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: exact formulation for all this stuff is because it is
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: locked in a vault in Manhattan because it was it
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: was the only one that worked, and it was owned
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: owned by this Van Broughton character, Van Broughton bron Hutt.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Bron Hutt. I don't know. It's a tough word, tough
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: name to say.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: I've seen it a hundred times in the last like
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: eight hours.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: But still yeah.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So until he died in two thousand and three, Harold
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: von Bronhutt and his wife Yolanda were the only two
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: people on the planet who knew what the special formula
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: was that created those conditions. Because remember, you've got sea
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: monkeys little Brian shrimp that are in the state of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: crypto bios. This is this dried out, descated state, and
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: when you put them just into regular tap water, they
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily come to life. There's something in that powder
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that alters the pH and the salinity and makes it
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just perfect for them to emerge from this cryptobiosis almost instantaneously.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: In fact, early on, the sea monkeys were originally just
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: called Instant Life, I believe, is what the name they
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: were originally marketed under. Yeah, not the best name.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: No, and it is it's weird that that name was
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: chosen because it turns out that Harold von Braunhutt is
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: or was a marketing genius. He wrote the original thirty
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: two page booklet that I believe still comes with the sets.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Is that right?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find evidence of that, and I was looking
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: online to find a transcription of it and was very
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: surprised to find no one's done that. Like you would
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: think there'd be entire fan sites that are that this
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: is like their bible, you know, the original version of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: it would have later editions of it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Couldn't find it anywhere.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if it still comes with it,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: but for many many many years and even after his death,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: that original pros which told this fantastical story. I mean,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: that's the whole point. It wasn't just like add water
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: and you're on set, right, I told the whole story
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: of sea monkeys.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It said things like your sea monkeys can be hypnotized,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you can train them to play baseball, you can race them.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: They're they're like they love to race all sorts of things.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: You can basically train them into a pack of friendly seals,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I think is the way.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: They put it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: It talked about like their courtship and reproduction and just
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff like it was, Yeah, this guy's
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: just basically do you remember that that treatment that George
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Lucas wrote about Wookies and Chewbacca's planet that got turned
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: into the Star Wars Christmas special? Yeah, this is the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: exact same thing. But this is the Sea Monkeys world, right.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I would like to see what I was about to say,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: I'd like to see the Sea Monkeys TV show, but
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: What did you think?
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Did you watch any of it?
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I did.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So that was a TV show in the eighties
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: starring Howie Mentel. Yeah, it just really doesn't get any better. Like,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: who else would have been better than Howie Mandel for that?
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: It was Howie Mendel. He produced it as well, along
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: with the Chioto brothers, who were known for making killer
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: clowns from outer space.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know what you're kind of going to
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: get there.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: It is the definition of camp Like they watched Pee
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Wee's Playhouse and they're like, this is kind of campy.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: But let's increase it by thirty five percent. Yeah, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that's what they did.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: It was not long for this world though, what right?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: No?
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: And the thing is is, I don't know if we've
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: gotten this across. It was live action.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it wasn't a cartoon.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: That's what made it so not just campy. That made
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: it unsettling as well, Like the actors were all done
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: up as like sea monkeys, and it was four kids,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: but it was obviously made by adults with a wink
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and a nod to other adults.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It was a weird, weird, weird show.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah it was.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: I didn't see it, and I only watched like a
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: bit of one episode enough to judge the whole eleven
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I think episode lifespan. But it was like Sid and
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Marty Kroft without the LSD.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Right, it was with PCP instinct. That's how it struck me.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, these people are on angel dust.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But all this to say that it was and
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: continues to be a big selling item. Like kids loved
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: sea monkeys. They bought them, and I mean, from what
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I can tell, when kids bought sea monkeys, they didn't
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: care that they didn't look like those things, and they
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: were just thought it was cool that something they got
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: in the mail really did come to life.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and you could raise them and after,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you know, after some tinkering, Von Brounhutt managed to get
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: them to live for a while.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: So these were like pets to the kids.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Plus I also think Chuck I suspect and this is
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: a big reason why sea monkeys were such a success.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Von Brounhutt when he started to market these things early on,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: he was following immediately in the wake of something called
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: instant fish that I think Whammo had tried to market
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and had failed terribly at And he was going around
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: trying to market something similar, and toy stores and retailers
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: were like, we don't want anything to do with those.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: People almost lost their jobs over that instant fish stuff.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Get out of here.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So von Braunhaut, in a stroke of genius, said, you
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to go right to the source.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So he started marketing directly two kids.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: He started hanging out at elementary school parking lot.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: He did, and he'd be like, here, here, kid, come
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: look at my minivan.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of stuff for you to choose from.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Well, the comic book thing was a stroke
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: of genius. How many like three three and a half
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: million ads a year? Was that it? Or pages?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Three hundred and three million pages? Oh wow a year?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And now though, so most of those were two page inserts.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So that's one hundred and fifty issues of one hundred
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and fifty million issues of comic books a year.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: I wonder how expensive that was.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I'm quite sure he got some deals over the years,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: because he started that marketing push in nineteen sixty four,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and I don't know exactly when it stopped, but it
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: was well into the nineties that there were sea monkey
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: ads and comic books still that were virtually the same
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: as ever.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Did you ever buy any of that stuff?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I had a friend who had sea monkeys. I never
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: did myself. Oh, but that was a point that I
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: was getting away from that I wanted to make. I
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: think one of the reasons sea monkeys were successful was
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: because it wasn't just that these things were pets or whatever.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: You ordered them yourself, like, you handled this transaction yourself right,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and you got to show your friends something that you purchased,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: like your parents didn't take you to the store or
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: anything like that. You contracted with this strange man to
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: buy these Brian shrimp from him, and they arrived and
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: you followed the instructions and now they're floating around.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you probably got mom or dad to cut
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: you a forty nine cent check or have them cut
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: a check, or you know, you you maybe got the
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: funds from your lemonade stand and converted that to a
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: cash bond.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeap, a bear bond.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know what any of that stuff is, but yeah,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: so you probably had little assistance for mom and that,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: or maybe you put a dollar in an envelope.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I'll bet many kids did. I wonder if brown Hut
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: sent the the change the change back, or was like,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I'm keeping this change, kid, just to teach you a
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: lesson that to send a dollar bill in the mail.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Anymore, because he can't send change in the mail, right.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Right, So, I mean suffice to say, sea monkeys were
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and are just like one of the classic toys of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: all time, largely because of the way they were marketed.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and von brown Hut this was not his
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: only jam. He had close to two hundred patents on everything.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Like you know, we mentioned the X ray specs and
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: that great, great ad of the guy looking at his
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: hand or the or the sec system misogynistic ad of
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: him leering at a woman in a dress, right, and
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: X ray spex were very disappointing him when you got those,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: because they were it was two pieces of cardboard with
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: little pinholes that you look through, and in between the
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: cardboard where that pinhole is is a feather.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Right, And so what it did was it basically projected
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: two overlapping images of the same thing. So the edges
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: around the outside of it were just kind of fuzzier
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: than the middle.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, supposedly.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: That was what an X ray of your hand looked like.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that's a case of fraud, Yeah, a
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: good way to put it. Or what about the invisible Goldfish?
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: That was another one?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Is that is that's so fraudulent that it's just beautiful,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: it's elegant, and it's fraudulent.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Well, but it's almost not fraudulent because here was the deal.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: He sold what was called invisible goldfish, which basically means nothing.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: He sold nothing successfully.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: It was a the kit came with the fishbowl, fish
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: food and instructions and that was it.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: And there was a.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Guarantee that you would never see your invisible fish, well,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that they would remain invisible.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's I think that is the distinction that
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: makes it not fraud. Right, is he basically said, you're
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: not going to see anything in this bowl.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was that.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: What else did he do?
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: He had He invented balder dash.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's right.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: He also invented those doll's eyes where you lay your
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: doll back and its eyes closed. He invented those.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he invented that technology, which is was a game
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: changer for creepy baby dolls.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: He also, even before his days of inventing, he was
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: an interesting guy basically his whole life. He he raced
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: motorcycles and cars under the name of the Green Hornet.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: He was a talent manager for a couple of people.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: One was a mental list.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, talent talent manager like Broadway Danny Rose was a
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: talent manager.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know that is bumau go along with it?
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: What is that? Is that? What's that from the Name's familiar,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: but I don't know.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: It was a Woody Allen movie where he played that
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: was it was a talent manager that managed like you
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: know people like this that would the high divers, that
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: would dive into shallow pools and mentalists. And this guy
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: was even a wouldn't he a mentalist for a.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Little while, I didn't see that. I wouldn't be at
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: all surprised.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he did a little work as the
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Great something.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Did you see? Well he managed a guy named the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Great Danager. I didn't get whether that was him or not,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: though it could have been.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, that was that was That was him
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and he had his own act.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Oh god, okay, did you see the guy who who
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the high dive guy? Did you see his jump?
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: No?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Oh my, okay, there's a guy named Amrie Lemouth. I
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: believe Yeah he Yeah, Imri Lamouth. If you go look,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I'm up, Hi, n Ri Lamoth, You're going to be
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: treated to an ap video that was shot in the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: early seventies from the looks of it, where he's opening
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: up for an evil canievil act in a parking lot
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: and god knows where in New Jersey, and he climbs
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: up this ladder, a forty foot ladder, and below beneath
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is one of these tiny little kiddie pools filled with
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: like eighteen inches of water, and this guy, who is
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: clearly in his mid seventies maybe older, dives forty feet
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: into eighteen inches of water in a kiddie pool belly first.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: He does basically a belly flop and immediately stands up
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: with like teta.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: in my life.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And this guy, Harold von Braunhutt, managed that guy back
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: in the day.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, he wasn't a He was a magician who
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: worked under the name the Great.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Tilepo that's a pretty good name.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: And he also admitted something the Directomat, which was this
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: device where you punch in your destination, like you're in
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: New York City, you punch in your destination and the
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: machine told you the fastest subway route.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Oh that's smart.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: It was Google Maps.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: That's very smart, like fifty years early, but using like
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: punch cards instead of you know, real technology basically.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: But I mean, the guy, you know, not only was
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: he a marketing genius, he had a real knack for
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: inventing some successful useful things.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: So he had this other thing that you could get
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: for like fifty nine to ninety five, and it was
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: actually a weapon, so much so that he was stopped
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: at LaGuardia Airport in nineteen seventy nine and arrested because
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: he had a briefcase of samples of this stuff that
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: he was selling I think through mail order, and it
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: was called the what is Coyoga Agent M five?
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Kyoga Agent in five. It's basically a telescoping
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: metal whip. You know, you've seen the telescoping batons and
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: things that cops can use. I guess a sure anybody
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: can use them. And do actually had one of those
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: for a little while for some reason?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Did you really?
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: I did? I thought, you know what, I'm not a
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: gun guy, but I thought, I'll put this thing in
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: the floorboard in my car. Sure, and if anyone ever
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: reaches their hand in the window, then they're gonna get
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: a wrapped knuckles smart that's funny. I don't know where
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: it went though. It didn't telescope properly, so I was like,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: that's probably not good.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: No, it's not because you I mean, that's not what
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you want and you plus, you have to practice with
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing, that's all.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: It's a big commitment. You just turning and running is
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: way better.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, just I went back to plan A, which
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: is poo poop my pants and cry right, hopefully that works.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: No one wants to punch of guy who's just pooped
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: his pants, you know.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: All right, so none of the butt at least, right,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: So this m five telescoping want or whip. This is
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: where things get weird. Yeah, and we'll we'll set this
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: up right before the ad break, because it turns out
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: that mister von bro Hud, mister von brown Hut was
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: perhaps almost certifiably a white nationalist aryan Nazi. Sure is
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: that fair to say?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I think so? All right, and.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: We'll get to that right after this.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: listen to JH. Sh Suffus no STUFFU No, okay, Chuck.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody just bit the tips of their fingers
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: off waiting for those ads to finish so we could
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: get back to it.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Is it fair to call him a Nazi?
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: So here's the thing. It has been.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: He's so thoroughly documented by legitimate sources like the Washington Post,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the Los Angeles.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: Times, his own mouth.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: The Yes, his own mouth, the Jewish Anti Defamation League,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I believe. I don't know if the Southern Poverty Law
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Center actually tracked him or not, but this guy has
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: definitely been identified as somebody who is has was a
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: longtime contributor to white nationalist groups, specifically the Aryan Nations
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: out of Idaho, which is one of the original white
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: hate groups in the United States. That's right, here's the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: problem with that. This is the guy who invented sea monkeys.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: The problem number two is that if you ever sent
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: your money off to buy some sea monkeys, some of
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: that money had a very good chance of having been
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: turned around and given to the Aryan nation. And here
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: in lies a real moral conundrum for a lot of people,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: under standably.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so well I didn't see did he just
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: give money? Period?
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, but the people are saying I gave you some
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: of that money for sea monkeys. Who knows what dimes
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: and nickels that I gave you went to Aryan nation.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I don't want any money going to Aryan nation, so
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: I feel horrible that my money went to you, which
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you turned in turn gave to.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: The Aryan nation.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Right. However, this M five was there was a man
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: named Richard Butler. This guy was a real piece of
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: human garbage.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: He was a founder of the Aryan Nation.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the worst. He's not with us anymore, thankfully,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: but he was a very bad man and he was
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: brought brought upon trial. And basically this M five little
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: telescoping whip that was invented by von Braunhutt, that was
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: specifically used that that product, and proceeds from that specifically
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: went to a fund to help out Richard Butler. Right,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: so we know that for sure.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything's going along for Harold von braun Hutt pretty
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: swimmingly until the late eighties. Right in the late eighties,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Richard Butler is brought up, along with I think fourteen
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: or fifteen other white nationalist leaders on sedition charges basically
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: trying to overthrow the government through plotting assassinations, trying to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: start a race war. They had some serious charges against them.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: They were eventually acquitted of these charges, but as part
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of this defense fund. In the Aryan Nation newsletter, Richard
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Butler talks about the Cyoga agent M five as a
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: great you know, a great tool for every Aryan nationalist
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to have a great weapon and defense mechanism.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: And if you.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Order this thing on the order form, write the letters
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a n for Arian and the inventor of this project
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: product has pledged that twenty five of those sixty dollars
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: will be given to my defense fund. So now, all
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, for the first time ever, the guy
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: who invented sea monkeys is tied to the guy who
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: founded the Aryan Nation.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Hate group.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was just like the beginning of the
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: can of worms, which he did not invent the can
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: of worms, but he should have. It was a beginning
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: of that being open because, like you said, late eighties,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: what was an eighty eight I think? And the Washington
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Post basically got a hold of this story, did some
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: investigating and found that he was involved in quote, some
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: of the most extreme racist and anti Semitic organizations in
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: the country. But here's the deal. There are quotes from
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: his mouth that say things about inscrutable, slanty Korean eyes
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: when dealing with Korean shop owners, and talking about Jews
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: and black people, like literal quotes. Yet when he's finally contacted,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: this great article that we kind of started with was
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: when he was still alive, he would deny that this
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: was that this was him, right, and but not try
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: and clear it up or anything. Basically just say that's
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: a bunch of bunk. Where there were news letters written
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: for an organization called the National Anti Zionist Institute, written
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: by one Hendrick von Braun. But the return address was
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: the same PO box that you sent off to get
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: sea monkeys.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sea monkey like paraphernalia still today, same address.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So it's not very Yeah it's in Maryland, which is
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: where he lived. So he wasn't like covering his tracks
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: very well at all.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: So he so all that started that Washington Post expose
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a specifically also came out of a property dispute. He
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: later claimed that all of these were lies and that
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: they were drummed up by somebody who's in a property
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: dispute with I think there was a developer who was
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: encroaching on his land and he was suing them, and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: I think he said that the developer had brought all
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this up.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: The thing is.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Whether the developer exposed it or not or tip the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Washington Post after this or not. This is already like
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: pretty well known in the toy industry and pretty well documented.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Like it wasn't just that this Harold von Braunhutt gave
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: money to the Aryan nation, like he would go to
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: their annual rally in Idaho and light the cross himself.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: He would he would speak at some of their their
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: conferences and apparently not very well received.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I thought, that's pretty funny speaker.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: No, he would.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: He would kind of go off on topics that the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Aryans weren't particularly interested in, like numerology or the pyramids,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: or how it all tied together. But the thing is
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: he had a lot of money and he was apparently
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: quite willing to give it. Now, no one has we
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: have to say, no one has ever documented a penny
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: that was given to the Arian Nation. The closest thing
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to a smoking gun is that newsletter from Richard Butler
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: saying that the inventor of this is pledged twenty five
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: dollars per But the very fact that he was basically
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: allowed into the orbit of Richard Butler himself strongly suggests
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: that he actually followed through on those campaign pledges and
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: legal defense von pledges. And apparently a former spokesman for
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: the Area Nation who is now a reformed racist, he says,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: spoke out about Harold von Brown Hutt and said he
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: didn't know exactly how much he gave, but he gave
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a lot, and he gave pretty frequently when he was asked.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Right. So things get a little weirder here because it
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: turns out that von Bronhutt was actually Jewish. He was
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: born to Jennette Cohen and Edward Bronhutt, not vonn Bhut.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Out of that little Vaughan to I guess germanize him,
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: I guess so. And he was born in New York
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: City on March thirty first, nineteen twenty six as Harold
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Nathan brown Hut. And if you know anything about Aryan
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Nations or any of those groups, they don't take kindly
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: to a Jewish guy, even if he's like rebukes that
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: to being a member. But like you said, he had
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of dough and that's basically why everyone thinks
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: they allowed him to stay on as a member.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: So that The nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article did
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of things. One out of the inventor of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: sea monkeys as an Aryan white supremacist, or I should
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: say just a white supremacist, he was an Aran. It
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: also outed him as a non Aryan, as a Jewish
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: person born Jewish to Jewish parents about as Jewish as
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: you can possibly get. Aside from being a practicing Jew. Right,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: so he he was outed in this in this Washington
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Post article like two times over, so everybody was mad
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: at him from either side.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: The thing is like, even after, I guess, the Area
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Nation released a press release about this, saying that they
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: were disappointed to find out this guy that they were
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: friends with was actually Jewish, but he was not kicked
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: out of their circle. He stayed apparently as intracted as
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: he was before and still was was a part of
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: the organization's conferences and stuff like that.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was. It wasn't just the Aryan Nations.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: He In nineteen eighty five, The Washington Post says that
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: US Attorney Thomas Bauer there was a weapons case in
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five against a member of the clan Grand
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Dragon Dale Reusch.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was in nineteen eighty I think that the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: transaction happened.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Okay, but the weapons case was in nineteen eighty five, gotcha,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: and Van Brounhutt basically loan the guy twelve thousand dollars
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: so he could buy more than eighty firearms. Yeah, like,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: here go buy a bunch of guns.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Well, okay, yes, and this is a Grand Wizard of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the Klan I believe right, yes, So the reason I
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: pointed out that it happened in nineteen eighty the year
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: before the Washington Post had drummed up in that nineteen
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: eighty eight article. The year before he had paid like
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: thirteen hundred dollars for his parents' graves in a Jewish
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: cemetery to be kept up in perpetuity. So this is like,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: this is this weird dual life. This guy is living
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: like born and raised Jewish, respecting his Jewish parents funeral
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: wishes and burial wishes, and then months later helping a
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: grand Wizard of the KKK buy eighty three firearms and
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: then taking possession of the firearms himself until.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: The loan was paid back.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: It's crazy.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It is a little crazy. It's quite surprising actually too.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I mean that's like a one two punch.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So he didn't. Actually, he would do licensing deals
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: over the years. That's how he ran his business. Probably
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: smartly to do that, if you ask me. But over
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: the years have been many many companies that held the
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: license for sea monkeys that he partnered with, and they
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: all kind of had different reactions. That was one called
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Larmie Limited, one called Basic Fun, one called Educational Insights.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: There may have been more today it resides with Big
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Time Toys. But this article that we dug up from
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: when he was still alive, basically, this guy gets in
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: touch with a lot of these people, and some of
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: them said they believe the story that it was just
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: some story that this angry neighbor cooked up to slander
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: his name. Other ones have said, yeah, you know what,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: everyone kind of knew about it, but we're not gonna
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: we're not gonna take that out on the Sea Monkeys, right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: And he was a nice guy to us, and what
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: he does in his private time is no one's business.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: The thing is is, like some of the people that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: he was doing business with were Jewish, and we're taking
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: some of the things he was doing in his private
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: life personally themselves. Like the guy who was the president
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of Basic Fund, that's one of the worst names for
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: a toy company based It's like, don't get too excited,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: this is just Basic Fund.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: That they had a spinoff company called Minimal Enjoyment.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: He he got the license or his company got the
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: license for Sea Monkeys to handle distributing and marketing sea monkeys,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and he apparently asked von Braunhutt, like, is this true,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and von Brounhutt told him no, there's this developer in
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: a dispute with who's like trying to drum up bad press.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: They're all lies.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Well, within a year, The New York Times wrote an
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: article about that annual rally at the Area Nation Compound
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: in Idaho and said that Harold von Bronhut had been
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: speaker there. So the guy from Basic Fun was like,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that's it. I'm done with your contracts broken.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that did happen sometimes over the years
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: and other times, you know people, I guess money talks,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: so they were willing to put up with it. Yeah, yep,
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: it's crazy. He you know, like when he was called personally,
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: he said, I don't have to defend myself to you
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: or anyone else. I'm hanging up right. So I guess
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: it was a time when, you know, pre Internet, pre
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: social media, where you could kind of get away with
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: stuff like this a little easier.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like he was, Yeah, it was just
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: an open secret. And I think, like you said, I
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: think you hit the nail on the head man when
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: there's like this much money involved, and when you're talking
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: about a brand where it's just like an beloved American icon. Yeah,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: like people just look the other way on the fact
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: that you're a white supremacist. You know, it's it's bizarre.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: But apparently this is a story of how the world
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: works in that respect.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was interesting for this one article I think
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: from the early two thousands. From the all was that
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: oh no, no, no, that was from twenty eleven. The
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: other one was oh yeah, yeah, that was when he
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: had currently the licensee was Educational Insights, and they at
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: the time it was funny to go back and read
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: this that they were trying to update the image for
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: the sea monkeys. Yeah yeah, and they had like these drawers.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: They hired some big advertising guy and marketing guy, and
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: he came in and was basically like, man like kids
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: these days, they don't want these little skinny, pot bellied King, Queen,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Prince and princess family. They want superheroes. So he buffed
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: them up and put capes on them and made a
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: new jingle and they never went with any of that stuff.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: It kind of all went in the waste basket.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Well, one new thing did come out of it, and
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: von Or Harold brown Hut had a patent on it
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: was one of his li patents. It was a watch
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: that you could inject a couple of live sea monkeys
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: into and they would live in there for twenty four
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: hours before I guess either they died or if you
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: could suck them back out and put them back in
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: their aquarium. But you could walk around with your two
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: favorite or luckiest sea monkeys for the day and tell
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: time as well. So that was there was at least
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: one thing that came out of that updating. But if
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: you go back and look, if you look at those
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: you're like, this is pretty lame. And you go back
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and look today at the sea monkey packaging, it is
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: basically back to how it was like in that Joe
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Orlando style. But if you do want to watch some
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: business people do some tap dancing, it's really interesting. Read
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: this article. It's called the Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: It was in the La Times on October first, two thousand,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: written by Tamar Brought, who did a pretty good job
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: of like just some good old fashioned like footwork or
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: legwork going to pound the pound the beat with the.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Footwork, sniff him off the case.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: All Right, Well, let's take another break and we're going
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: to come back and we're talking about We're going to
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: talk about where things stand today in the fight over
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: the rights and the fortune of the sea monkeys.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: listen to JH sh suffuse stuff.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: You s No, all right, so we know what happened. Actually,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: how did he die? I didn't even see that.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't see that either. He died in two thousand
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and three, but I'm not sure why. All right, So
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: he died, Yeah, that's true.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: But he left behind his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhutt.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Did you look her up?
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, okay, yeah she was. She was an actress.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: She was sort of a sort of like a pin up,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: bombshell b movie actress.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: It's fairsh I had also seen her movies as described
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: as adult films as well.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Sure, she was in a movie. I got to see
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: this one.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: It's called Love After Death and it's a softcore zombie
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: flick from the sixties. Yeah, but yes, she was a
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting person in her own right as well.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and she says for her as far as the
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: Aryan Nation stuff. She says, like, I never knew and
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: saw this side of him. So I don't know if
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: she's being on the level or if she's just kind
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: of quashing this and covering for him. It was kind
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: of not clear to.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Me I saw.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was in that New York
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Times article or in the nineteen eighty eight Washington Post article.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: But his first wife was contacted and interviewed for it,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and she was like, what are you guys talking about?
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: So who knows. Maybe he did just keep the He
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: was clearly somebody who could compartmentalize the different parts of
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: his personality. So maybe he really did just leave the
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: wives out of it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Man, how could you not know something? Right? That's crazy?
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Just going to Idaho on my yearly trip.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's weird. He always goes to Idaho in the
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Aryan Nation assembles.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: All right. So, Yolanda Signora Levan bron Hut lived and
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: I think still lives in or at least as of
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: two years ago when this article came out, in the
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Potomac River estate in southern Maryland. But she is she's
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: she's she's broke. Yeah, basically, she has no electricity, no
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: running water, and she is and been in illegal battle
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: with Big Time Toys and their chief executive Sam Harwell
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: for basically several years, trying to get money because Big
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Time Toy says, this is our company now.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Big Time Toys sounds like I'd be nervous about
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: going into business with them. I'm more of a basic
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: fun guy. Big Time Toys sounds like they're moving too
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: fast for me, you know what I mean? Yeah, so yeah, So,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yolanda Brown Hutt has She's got kind of like a
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: great gardens thing going on right now against her will.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: This is not something she's happy about at all. And
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: her position is, as far as The Times tells it
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: is that she engaged in a licensing deal, which is
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: how sea monkeys have been produced basically since the beginning,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: with a company with that company, Big Time Toys, where
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: they would handle the packaging and the distribution, and her company,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: her own little company, would handle making the actual sea
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: monkeys that were that were put into the packaging that
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Big Time Toys sold. Right, So, Big Time Toys would
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: buy the sea monkeys that they would put into the
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: packages and then would turn around and sell to the public.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: That was the arrangement initially.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Right, So we have the secret formula that no one
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: else has seemed to be been able to crack.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: This is Yolanda talking.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, should I have done my Jolana voice?
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's hear it.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know what.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: She sounds like, high pitched Italian stereotype.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, she It would have been like three
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: different groups of people if yeah, yeah, I think you wi.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: She basically said, we have the secret formula, the only
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: one that works that can keep these things alive. Everyone
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: else has tried and failed, and so we will sell
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: these to you and you can do everything else and
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: cut me a check. And there was also a side
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: deal that said you can buy this company, including the
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: secret formula, for five million bucks up front and then
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: another five million and installments, and so Big Time basically
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: called her up a few years ago, probably about five
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: years ago at this point, if my math is right,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: and said, you know what, all these payments we've been
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: making to you for the licensing deal, we just kind
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: of consider that layaway and as far as we're concerned,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: we own sea monkeys.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've reached that five million dollar point. So there ares.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Which ostensibly should not have been that money. It should
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: have been separate payments, if I understand this correctly.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: But I mean, when somebody does that, what are you
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: going to do? You got to go see them, right,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: And that's what they're doing, and they're bleeding this lady dry,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: at least as far as this New York Times profile
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: is concerned. And I mean, if you get into a
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: fight like that and you don't have the money, you
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: can lose. So this could be a sad end to
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the Sea Monkey saga. Because here's the other problem. You
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: might be saying to yourself, well, why doesn't she just
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: not sell them the sea monkeys anymore?
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Well she did.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: She stopped when they stopped making payments and said they
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: owned the Sea Monkey brand. And it turned out that
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: in this court case that big big, big Time Toys
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: have been buying knockoff sea monkeys from China, and then
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: that's what they were putting into the Sea Monkey thing.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: So apparently if you're buying, if you buy currently a
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Sea Monkey package, you're getting Big Time Toys packaging and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Chinese knockoff sea monkey packets.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Which don't work. Apparently, I went and looked at Amazon reviews,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: and almost all of them for all the products said
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: none of them hatched, or they hatched for like a day.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: These things stink. When I was a kid, they worked.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: So it's weird that it's sort of ironic that they
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: ended up creating a special breed essentially that worked, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: that ended up being there undoing. Because in court and
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: the affidavit, the leader, this Harwell guy, whose wife, by
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: the way, is ahead. She's a speaker of the House
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Yeah, they're a power
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: family all the way around and not to be trifled with.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: In his affidavit, he says he outsourced the sea monkeys
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: of China and says there are seven recognized species of
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: our Timia brine shrimp and this is not one of them.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: So because they had created their own species, it ended
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: up being there undoing at court. It looks like because
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: it doesn't officially exist as a real species that these
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: guys are getting.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he got a patent on
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: the species that they made.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: Well, no, that's what I'm saying that. But he's not
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: getting that species. Oh, I see, he's getting these Well
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: they're not knockoffs their mother Nature's own. Sure, sure, China,
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: but they're not the ones that.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Are working, right, I got youa.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: So it's just a mess.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: But then still doesn't that like raise questions about how
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: you could use the Sea Monkey's name or.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: That's what I wondered.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: But I guess if they had the license to use
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: the Sea Monkey's name because they were in charge of
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: packaging and distribution, maybe then yeah, I guess they could say, well,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: we're not going to use the official ones any longer,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to use these natural ones.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Man, what a mess.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Well, and it's a mess too because you're like, oh,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: do I root for the side of this guy who
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: was a white nationalist, but you know, his wife says
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: she didn't know anything about that, and she's going broke
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: and has been basically had this company stolen from her.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, it's just I don't know, I
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: don't know what to think.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Or do you root for the guys who are apparently
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: stealing the company fake waido of the white national.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: Y for big time toys?
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah? You know what. I predict that, Chuck.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I predict that Sea Monkeys the brand will ultimately rise
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: about this that it will. It will survive this somehow
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: and still be around twenty thirty years from now.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: The sea monkeys will take over.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they will eventually overthrow the human race, like the
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Arians plotted to overthrow the US government. What a story,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: It's quite a story. That's a good one, man. Thanks
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: for digging this up. Sure, well, if you want to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: know more about sea monkeys, just start digging around, pulling
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: at the loose threads. You're gonna find some interesting stuff.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: And since I said interesting stuff, that means it's time
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: friends for a listener mail.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna call this pomp Pei Pompeiian lemons. Okay, is
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: that how you would say it?
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Pompey in Yeah? I thought that was beautiful.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: All right, long time listener, first time emailer. Guys recently
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: listened to the Pompei show. Very informative. Uh and I
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: to be a tour guide in Europe and led close
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: to fifteen tours on the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: I listened to Josh experience with the lemons. They do,
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: in fact grow to be the size of your head. However,
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: those gigantic lemons are actually called sedri and are more
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: for show than anything.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: They're called sedri the end of day in it.
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: If you ever cut one and a half, the inside
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: is actually about the size of a normal lemon. The
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: rind can be a few inches thick, and boy are
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: they bitter. Definitely not something you keep around for lemonade.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: Just something I wanted to share.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Thanks for ruining everything for me.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: And also another thought the other day in the car,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: have either of you just said no when one of
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: you asked for a commercial break. I thought it'd be
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: funny if one of you just said, nah.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: We've come close. We have, haven't we I don't know.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Did it not make it into an episode?
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: It might not? Have we have and we just edited
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: that part out and kept going. I think.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Well that is for Matt McDonald, who is a software
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: developer at Neocloud.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Matt.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I think I was kind of disappointed to read that
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: email originally, but whatever, I guess you got to just
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: live with reality, right.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: You've made an enemy today.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: If you want to get.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: In touch with us and ruin our reality like Matt did,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: you can send all of us, including Jerry, an email
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and has always
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web. Stuffishould Know
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: dot Com.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.