Sea Monkeys: C or D?

A comment I made in the classic albums thread started me thinking about this scam product that was sold to kids in the 60s and later. The ads (which were placed prominently in comic books) promised a "family" of humanoid creatures whom you could watch chill out on the lawn of their undersea castle. What you got instead were brine shrimp, which are not even vaguely humanoid. Certainly one of the key early life experiences that taught me to be very skeptical, if not cynical, of the promised benefits of any product, and for that, I say classic.

My 8yo has been maintaining a tank of them for the past few months and gotten lots of pleasure out of it. The least maintenance pet possible still required him to remember to feed them once a week, which was good practice for incremental next steps to larger responsibilities, so definitely classic!

inexplicably he never seemed to go through the frustration phase of them not living up to his expectations, though i think the marketing was significantly toned down from those old ads with humanoid features. can't remember where he heard about them.

No doubt, my brother and I raised several clutches of them, and you're right about the educational aspects. But for me as a kid in about 69-70, the gap between what I thought I was getting and what I actually got was enormous.

Wait, so they DON'T look like this?

https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/2/classic-comic-book-advertisement-sea-monkeys-20190925-wingsdomain-art-and-photography.jpg

Maybe mine were defective, idk.

Here are the products developed by Harold von Braunhut:

X-ray specs, which advertisements claimed enabled the wearer to see through clothing and flesh. The product has appealed to generations of curious pre-adolescents.

Amazing Sea-Monkeys, which were tiny brine shrimp eggs that "came to life" when water was added.

Crazy Crabs, which were simply hermit crabs.

Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters, a card with a printed monster that would grow "hair" (actually mineral crystals) when water was added.

Invisible Goldfish, imaginary fish sold with a handbook, fish food and a glass bowl, that were guaranteed to remain permanently invisible.

In the 70's I fell for these elaborate battle scenes of WWII toy soldiers (packed in their own footlocker) on the back of some Charlton war comic. Needless to say, what showed up was cheap and shoddy and disappointing.

The spy scope I ordered in the back of a THOR comic was actually briefly functional, but it was in my back pocket when I fell on roller skates

All in all, these scams are good primers for unrelenting disappointment of late stage capitalism... the 12 foot skeleton, the rubber caveman mask, and the aforementioned X-ray glasses

I got those soldiers too! They were made of incredibly cheap, brittle plastic, and were basically two-dimensional.

I also tried Sea Monkeys btw, but I don't think they actually ever revived

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/hitler-and-sea-monkeys

At least current Sea Monkey purchases probably aren’t funding weapons for the Klan

Yeah, there was some white supremacist connection lurking in the back of my mind, but I couldn't remember what it was. I thought his Wikipedia page didn't mention it, but I didn't read down far enough after copying the list of his "inventions"--a list that pointedly omits the Kioga Agent M5.

wow never heard of that

(Reminds me of how one ordinary 'John Rosenberg' changed his name to the very Germanic "Werner Hans Erhard" - founder of EST)

In the 70's I fell for these elaborate battle scenes of WWII toy soldiers (packed in their own footlocker) on the back of some Charlton war comic. Needless to say, what showed up was cheap and shoddy and disappointing.

I ordered this exact same set and from the second I saw the crappy cardboard "footlocker" I knew I had gotten rooked.

The Kioga Agent M5, btw, appears to be some sort of collapsible nightstick. I doubt you'd actually want to rely on it for self-defense.