Today, kids can’t be fooled by offers of instant, crown-wearing pets or monsters you can grow from a kit. No, today’s kids are prey to far more sinister things taking direct aim at them from the landscape of social media.
What comes to mind when you hear the words “Sea-Monkey”?
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“Bowl full of happiness”? Or, “Fool and his money”?
For many of us, it was probably our first encounter with the term “caveat emptor”. It was the first time we felt we had been fleeced in the marketplace. Sea-Monkeys were — to say the least — not exactly as advertised.
You remember Sea-Monkeys, of course. For decades, the colourful ads were featured in the back of comic books displaying a gleeful family of four creatures, each wearing a crown, no less. You got all of this for only $1 (plus 30 cents for shipping and handling). Of course we wanted Sea-Monkeys. The promise of instant “frolicsome” pets that could be trained to “obey your commands like a pack of friendly seals” was intoxicating. We couldn’t get to the mailbox fast enough.
Weeks, maybe months later, your package arrived, and with it, your first instalment in buyer beware education. Instead of adorable instant pets, you received several envelopes and a sheet of instructions. One envelope contained water conditioner, one envelope contained food, and one envelope contained Sea-Monkey eggs. Combining these things produced not a “bowlful of happiness”, but a bowl full of brine shrimp. Brine shrimp also goes by the name of “fish food”.
So, we were all made a dollar poorer, but we were all a little wiser for the encounter. Brine shrimp weren’t much fun, and they weren’t at all interesting, either. The more interesting tale, however, is the story behind Sea-Monkeys. The New York-born inventor of Sea-Monkeys, one Harold von Braunhut, created an array of bizarre but beguiling products. Long before he was foisting fish food as pets on kids, von Braunhut was offering “Invisible Goldfish”. Your kit included a small goldfish bowl, a package of aquarium gravel, a plastic plant, and a sign that read “Invisible Goldfish. DO NOT FEED.” Von Braunhut also laid claim to “X-Ray Spex” — plastic glasses that promised to let you “See bones thru skin! See thru clothing!” What you actually saw was a chicken feather pressed between two pieces of plastic.
Although not as big a success as Sea-Monkeys, von Braunhut’s “Hair-Raising Monsters” was another novelty that left its mark on the public. For just $1 you would receive two “of the most incredible biological wonders you have ever seen”. They were guaranteed to make “even your closest friends gasp”. What you actually got was two cardboard cut-outs impregnated with salt crystals — epsom or alum salts — which grew when you got them wet. The only thing hair-raising about these was the degree of our naivete.
It’s not surprising that von Braunhut had originally started out in life as a magician and an inventor. Harold was a crazy quilt of enterprise. He is credited with working on the Directomat, a GPS-like, automated information system that was implemented by the New York subway in the 1950s. He competed as a motorcycle racer, and he managed the career of a man whose claim to fame is that he jumped from great heights into kiddie pools. He also handled the career of a mind-reader. But those comic book ads made Harold rich. When advertisers talk about direct sales geniuses, von Braunhut’s name is often mentioned.
Sea-Monkeys were so pervasive in the culture that, in 1998, American astronaut John Glenn took 400 million of them into space. In 2022, the Sundance Film Festival showcased “Instant Life”, a documentary exploring the life of Harold von Braunhut and his Sea-Monkey kingdom. Like so many stories from the business world, the saga of the Sea-Monkey empire involves legal battles, clashes of personalities and takes surprisingly dark turns.
Today, kids can’t be fooled by offers of instant, crown-wearing pets or monsters you can grow from a kit. No, today’s kids are prey to far more sinister things taking direct aim at them from the landscape of social media. Oh, for the simple treachery of the Sea-Monkey.
This week’s question for readers:
Question: What separated you from your cash when you were a kid? Did you succumb to the lure of sea-monkeys or the like?
Last week’s question for readers:
Question: Have you ever been disappointed in a change in a commercial brand?
• I wanted to let you know you can get mincemeat with suet from the British Butcher Shop in North Vancouver.
Maria Patten
• Starting in the 1960s, I was a fan of Kraft Catalina salad dressing. A bottle of this tangy, orange-coloured dressing was always in our fridge. Then one day, I noticed a change. The tangy savouriness was somehow missing, replaced by a sickly sweetness. Kraft Canada confirmed that they had “updated” the recipe. Eventually, I dumped it down the sink.
Glen Taylor
• KD Mac and Cheese — that reliable go-to when you were too lazy to cook. It used to read “made with real cheese”. Now the ingredients show a cheese sauce made up of a number of chemicals. The colour is now provided by paprika and turmeric, which gives it an unpleasant taste, in my opinion.
John Ketteringham
• Similar to the removal of suet from mincemeat is the effect that manufacturers discontinuing a product can have on other items. Case in point, Bick’s, Heinz and Strubb’s discontinuation of Red Hamburger Relish. This cucumber-based relish was used, not only by consumers, but also by restaurants to make their hamburgers. A hamburger without red relish is just a patty on a bun. I noticed the impact of this absence when I had a burger at a well-known Vancouver chain and noticed it was not the same as it used to be.
Gord Walter
• I’ve stopped purchasing Shake ‘n Bake because they decided to stop putting the plastic “shake” bags in their package. I now dip my chicken pieces in milk and egg, then coat with Panko.
At first, I thought that there was an error on the production line when no bags were in the box. Nope, the second box was the same. I did email the company, but never received a reply. Apparently, they think they’re saving the environment, which I’m all for. But I still had to use my own bags to shake the stuff. I wonder how many millions of dollars they are saving by eliminating the bags? Yet they still have the audacity to call it Shake ‘n Bake. I think they should rebrand it as Bakie ‘no Shakie.
Dawn Wittenberg
• Christie Premium Plus crackers have shrunk to a useless dimension. They used to measure 55mm square, just right for making snacks. They used to be a staple in our kitchen for that reason. They have been downsized to 48mm square, too small for much of anything. This is a size reduction of about 25 per cent. The crackers also seem more brittle, so I suspect that they are also thinner. All in all, a disappointing cheap shot and another example of sneaky “shrinkflation”. Grrrr.
Gord Pushee
• I’m almost always disappointed when a favourite brand is bought out by another company. Inevitably, there are changes, and not for the better. Putting accountants in charge of taste or other qualities that made a product popular usually means less-expensive ingredients are used — more salt, more sugar, less fruit. When Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was taken over by a big food producer it got sweeter. When Christie’s graham wafers were taken over, they got sweeter — sugar is a less-expensive ingredient. That’s okay because it forced me to find an alternative. I can easily make excellent graham wafers, and I found even better ice cream than our beloved Ben and Jerry’s.
Suet, as with any fat, is also a flavour enhancer and carrier. I make mincemeat every year from a recipe used by my grandmother, and it has suet in it. There are other versions of mincemeat in this heritage cookbook that don’t use suet, but I haven’t tried them so cannot say if they’re as satisfying, but coconut oil is certainly not an ingredient. It is easy to make, although a meat grinder or similar is required. I buy a pound of suet, use what I need, and keep the rest in the freezer. Real mince tarts are still on the menu, and that suet helps keep us warm when the weather is chilly.
Irene Wotten
• I used to buy mincemeat from Safeway. If I recall, it was the Empress brand. Really delicious without being too sweet. My whole family loved it. For the past few years I haven’t found this brand on the shelves. Since then, I have tried a well-known British brand that was so sweet I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my mouth. Another brand was so watery I had to drain it before putting it into the tart shells. I might have to try making my own mincemeat next year.
Michelle Clayton
• My mom always made her own mincemeat. She had a small crock in the pantry and added to it all through the year. She bought her suet from the family butcher. I always bought my mincemeat from my local butcher until this year. I couldn’t find any and bought a Scottish product with a well-known name and was terribly disappointed. It was very fruity, not like the mincemeat I have used for almost 70 years. This is the same brand that has always made the marmalade that I enjoy. But since last fall the marmalade has been made in Turkey. It was so solid and hard I had to use a sharp knife to cut it from the jar and couldn’t spread it on toast. I certainly hope these companies will bring back the products that we all loved.
Thelma Bell
• I am sure you are being deluged by offers of tarts and pies. I made too many mincemeat tarts from my own mincemeat made with organic suet and the meat that still clung to it, so also have some on offer. I prefer tarts to pies. The pastry to mincemeat ratio is key. It sounds like you prefer more mincemeat than pastry.
Barbara Beach
• When offered a mincemeat tart, I’m sure that my eyes light up. When I see that it’s a commercial one very heavy on thick pastry with only a small filling, I hide my disappointment well. If no one was around I’m sure that I’d take it, break it in half, eat the filling and chuck the unwanted heavy pastry. To mis-paraphrase an old commercial: Show me the filling.
Ron Payne
• Suet is essential. Just as it is with carrot pudding (butter makes it taste weird). My recent experience with Habitant pea soup was a massive disappointment. Watery. Tasteless. Not a shred of ham. I was sick, so I needed soup. The big can of soup on the shelf reassured me I would not starve. Opening the can, I was ready to scoop out the thick paste into the pot. Shock. It all poured into the pot. No thick soup, just a thin, grainy gruel.
I used to haul cans of this soup back to Minnesota when I lived there. A comforting Canadian touchstone. Now that I am living in Canada again, I can buy it anytime. But no. No more. Nevermore.
Campbell soups bought the brand two years ago, according to Reddit readers, who also complained about this new watery slop. A Canadian iconic food brand destroyed by American greed. My heart is broken.
Sheila Humphrey
• E.D. Smith’s lemon curd tastes as much like lemon as a yellow crayola does. It used to be tasty, but now I think they should sell it as wall spackle or for stucco repair — it’s inedible.
A. Chambers