Dark reality behind childhood favourite toy Sea Monkeys

It turns out that everybody's favourite novelty childhood pets Sea Monkeys have a rather dark reality behind them.

Boasting collectors all over the world, including YouTube star 'Sea-Monkey Dude' (real name Jonathan Hicks), who once told LADbible that he owns a 16-gallon aquarium filled with these magical swimmers, but has headaches over water contaminants; they even give back to their ecosystem once dead.

Meanwhile, another man was 'creeped out' by what he saw when he put his Sea Monkeys underneath a microscope.

However, the questionable outlook of the inventor of these aquatic pets is a story in itself.

Lots of us had Sea Monkeys as kids (Amazon)

What actually are Sea Monkeys?

Sea Monkeys is the marketing name for water-dwelling creatures, the brine shrimp, which was changed from 'Instant Life' in 1962.

They come in packets of dust filled with brine shrimp eggs in a state of suspended animation (called 'cryptobiosis').

When poured into a tank of purified water, the Sea Monkeys magically hatch and start to grow over the next couple of weeks, sustained on a diet of yeast and spirulina (a supplement made from blue-green algae) which is fed to them every seven days.

One strange birth defect is that they arrive with one eye, but upon reaching adult maturity they'll have popped out another two.

Sea Monkeys, which boast monkey-ish tails, are translucent and breathe through their feathery feet.

Lifespan-wise, it's typically two to three months - with one man showing what happened when his reached six months old - but under ideal conditions they've been known to live for up to five years.

Who the creator was

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Harold von Braunhut was the American inventor who developed Sea Monkeys.

He apparently got the idea for these little aqua buddies during a trip to his local pet store.

Noticing how brine shrimp were being used as fish food, he wondered if they could serve an educational need for kids in terms of the natural world, and so he conducted experiments to figure out ways of preserving them and bringing them back to life.

Alongside his Amazing Sea Monkeys, which were created in 1957 and commonly advertised across comic books, he was also responsible for the invention of X-Ray Specs. They allowed users to see through or into solid objects, supposedly, thanks to an optical illusion.

Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters, Invisible Goldfish, and Crazy Crabs were some of his other popular products tailored towards children.

He died at the age of 77 in November 2003.

Sea Monkeys were big business in the toy sector (Getty Stock Image/Nora Peevy)

What he did

Von Braunhut's name is somewhat stained by his white supremacist associations.

According to The Washington Post, the inventor was raised in Jewish household under the name 'Harold Nathan Braunhut' and had a religious upbringing. He would later add 'von' to his name in the 1950s for a more Germanic-sounding identity, seemingly distancing himself from his Jewishness.

He would gain notoriety for his racial and political stances, regularly attending neo-Nazi meetings and buying weapons for the Klu Klux Klan.

Von Braunhut didn't attempt to hide this either, as he once shared in an interview: "You know what side I'm on. I don't make any bones about it."