Sea Monkeys

Sea Monkeys

If you were ever fascinated by the Sea Monkeys ad in the back of your favorite comic book, right next to the ad for the x-ray glasses, then we are on the same page.  If you ever ordered off for the Sea Monkeys, then there is no longer any mystery for you, but for those who always wondered if they looked like the Sea Monkeys in the pictures, the bad news is they did not.  In reality, the Sea Monkeys were nothing more than Brine Shrimp.  When you ordered them from your comic book (starting in 1962), you received a little hatching kit and instructions on what to do.  After pouring water into a tank of water, and adding a couple of packets over a 24 hour period that contained salt, brine shrimp eggs, and some other mysterious ingredients, the Sea Monkeys would appear almost instantly.  In reality, these particular brine shrimp where engineered to “hibernate” while out of water, and re-animated (so to speak) when put in a new water source.