Maybe another reason to buy the Aqua Dragons or similar instead.
I ran across this piece earlier, and it’s a pretty wild ride. Including how many people around him were aware of von Braunhut’s involvement with Aryan Nations, while they kept brushing over it and making excuses to continue working with him. (What a surprise, right? 😒)
Von Braunhut died in 2003, and his company is apparently not even supplying the special hybrid eggs anymore after a big dispute between his estate and the outfit now using the name. (No wonder I was seeing a bunch of recent reviews suggesting that the quality had gone way downhill.) Not so keen on supporting Big Time’s business practices either, by the sound of things. But, von Braunhut may well have been funneling some of the Sea Monkey profits to white supremacist organizations for years, and the whole thing is pretty disturbing.
Just to make things weirder, from that NYT story:
Except for one almost unimaginable and horrible thing. Harold von Braunhut was a neo-Nazi. Moreover, a Jewish neo-Nazi. He was born Harold Nathan Braunhut, to Jewish parents. He inserted the “von” to sound more Germanic.
At some point before 1960, AFAICT.
(Also, from last year: Sea-Monkeys documentary explores toy creator’s dark side. It runs about 16 minutes, and was worth a watch.)
The Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist
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