Many of us fell for the idea of Sea-Monkeys. As kids, we hoped to own royal underwater creatures who wore golden crowns and sat on thrones. The package promised a kind of « Planet of the Apes »-meets-Atlantis inside cheap plastic mini-aquariums.
Sadly, Sea-Monkeys were nothing more than brine shrimp (Artemia salina) whose eggs could be brought to life by adding them to water.
As exciting as seeing the eggs hatch and turn into tiny translucent shrimp was, the only other trick Sea-Monkeys performed was swimming toward light. Not exactly what was advertised on the toys’ packaging.
In the video » Just Add Water » by Great Big Story and CNN Films, posted Wednesday, we learn the bizarre history of Sea-Monkeys and their creator, an eccentric inventor named Harold von Braunhut who marketed the creatures to gullible kids since their debut in 1960.
