# Sea Monkey Business **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 23, 1999, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824 "1999-09-23T14:58:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Inky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Inky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/1 "1999-09-23T14:58:00Z")
If you ever read a Marvel comic in the seventies you saw them. Full-page ads for sea monkeys in full garish color featuring Daddy, Mommy, big brother and little sister sea monkey. An entire 1950’s nuclear family in a fishbowl. Some ads even shows a noble, bethroned king sea monkey complete with crown, scepter and harem of nubile young sea monkey maidens. So, you shell out $4.99 (plus $2 for shipping and handling) for the super deluxe kit which features “Toys” for your little friends to play with (and isn’t that extra dollar a small price to pay for your sea monkeys quality of life?). Every day you race home from school. Not because just your eager for your sea monkeys to arrive, but because Todd Snodgrass the school bully has threatened to knock your teeth out. Nevertheless, four to six weeks later your package arrives. You carefully prepare the water and wait for your new aquatic playmates to hatch. That’s when you receive your first hard, cold lesson in capitalism…. Caveat emptor, buyer beware. Instead of the playful anthropomorphic creatures depicted in your Spider Man comic, you get gruesome squigglies that look like something from a stagnant pond. So tell me, how could fraud on such a grand scale go on for so long? Were the politicians in the pocket of the multi-billion dollar sea monkey/industrial complex? Was Ralph Nader too busy with exploding Pintos to address sea monkeys and X-Ray Spex? Is there a class action suit I can join? Not at all bitter Adam “Inky” “Anybody want a subscription to “Grit”?” Greene ---
**Author:** ![Misanthrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Misanthrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misanthrope)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/2 "1999-09-23T15:01:00Z")
I kinda found the female sea monkeys attractive. Does that make me sick? * * * D’oh ---
**Author:** ![kellibelli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e480ec/32.png) [@kellibelli](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellibelli)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/3 "1999-09-23T15:04:00Z")
Yes. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/4 "1999-09-23T15:07:00Z")
I’ve seen the sea monkeys advertised, but I have never known anyone to actually own them. They are some kind of little shrimp, aren’t they? ---
**Author:** ![Inky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Inky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/5 "1999-09-23T15:13:00Z")
Yep, little shrimpy things. If you saw 'em swimming around in your bathtub you’d have a stroke. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/6 "1999-09-23T15:18:00Z")
Yes, they’re brine shrimp. Which means that they have several billion years of evolution to go before they can play the ukulele (but only about five years before you’ll see brine shrimp with those plastic recorders from grade school). Anyway, my WAG is that Nader had bigger fish to fry and wasn’t wasting his time on these shrimps. No one really cared if the kids got bilked out of $4.99 for Sea Monkeys or X-Ray Glasses or whatever. I suppose you could file a suit now, but the statute of limitations is probably up and you can’t buy a new pack now and claim you didn’t know what would be in there. Maybe you can get a 5 year old to buy some and represent him in court 😉 * * * “I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.” ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/7 "1999-09-23T15:20:00Z")
Cecil covered this in a column that was reprinted in a Straight Dope book, complete with AOL member comments, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/8 "1999-09-24T05:09:00Z")
I guess I was a weird kid, but I actually liked Sea Monkeys. I didn’t feel ripped off in the least bit. But if there’s a lawsuit to be filed, I’d imagine it would be for the eye strain caused by looking for those little suckers when they first hatch. After a while they’d get big, but at first they were damn near microscopic. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/9 "1999-09-24T05:14:00Z")
Brine shrimp = Sea “Monkey”. Huh? Not that I really can understand “sea horse” either. ---
**Author:** ![Mardi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/74df32/32.png) [@Mardi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mardi)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/10 "1999-09-24T05:19:00Z")
I was actually more interested in the “Grow your own stalagtites” ads for those little pellets that grew with water. I bought one of those. Worked great. joe ---
**Author:** ![Inky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Inky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/11 "1999-09-24T05:19:00Z")
Well, Voltaire, my point was this: how could they get away with a full page ad depicting frolicking, anthropomorphic sea monkeys and then deliver somthing that looks like mosquito larvae? ---
**Author:** ![Inky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Inky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/12 "1999-09-24T05:22:00Z")
I LOVED those funky colored stalagtite (or would it be stalagmite?) things!! ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/13 "1999-09-23T18:00:00Z")
> [@](#): > > how could they get away with a full page ad > depicting frolicking, anthropomorphic sea monkeys and then deliver somthing that looks > like mosquito larvae? The same way McDonalds gets away with pictures of fresh, visually appealing hamburgers in their ads. ---
**Author:** ![Keeves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f05b48/32.png) [@Keeves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeves)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/14 "1999-09-23T18:27:00Z")
mojo wrote > [@](#): > > Not that I really can understand “sea horse” either. Are you serious? The resemblance between seahorses and real horses is uncanny! Sea horses swim upright, their body looks like a horse’s wide broad neck, the rectangular shape of the mouth looks _exactly_ like a regular horse. Have you ever seen a seahorse? ---
**Author:** ![Holly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/48db29/32.png) [@Holly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Holly)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/15 "1999-09-23T18:29:00Z")
We recently had a family of sea monkeys as educational material for the kids. Big hit, until someone put a dead fly into the container, causing all of the sea monkeys to mysteriously perish. The minuteness problem of the freshly hatched larvae is solved via modern technology: the clear plastic sides of the aquarium are outfitted with magnifying lenses so that when the itty bitty monkeys shimmy past, you can see them. ---
**Author:** ![pluto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f08c70/32.png) [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/16 "1999-09-23T19:28:00Z")
> [@](#): > > I LOVED those funky colored stalagtite (or would it be stalagmite?) things!! They would be stalgmites. Stala **c** tites grow downward from the **c** eiling. Stala **g** mites grow upward from the **g** round. ## Mnemonic furnished at no additional charge. “non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem” – William of Ockham ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/17 "1999-09-23T19:38:00Z")
I always used “Stalac **tite** s are stuck **tite** on the ceiling.” * * * Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars. ---
**Author:** ![WallyM7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5e925/32.png) [@WallyM7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WallyM7)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/18 "1999-09-23T20:00:00Z")
I raise Sea Monkeys all the time. I have an aquarium, so I often buy brine shrimp eggs, hatch them out and feed them to my fish. All aquarium stores have them. You can hatch thousands for a couple of bucks. The eggs themselves are viable for a couple of years or more, if you keep them in a cool, dry place. * * * If you’re an optimist, you haven’t been paying attention. ---
**Author:** ![WallyM7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5e925/32.png) [@WallyM7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WallyM7)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 1999, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/19 "1999-09-23T20:03:00Z")
My apologies to all Sea Monkey lovers out there, but hey, we live in a Darwinian world. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 1999, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824/20 "1999-09-24T00:17:00Z")
They have covered their arses, my friends. It says quite clearly on the advertisements that the images do not represent what the sea monkeys actually look like. After all they were naked pink things with crowns. I doubt any kid believed that’s what they’d get. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sea-monkey-business/3824.md?page=2)