
The Battle Over the Sea Monkey Fortune - amk_
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-battle-over-the-sea-monkey-fortune.html
======
oniony
That's not a subtitle one reads too often: "A former 1960s bondage-film
actress is waging legal combat with a toy company for ownership of her
husband’s mail-order aquatic-pet empire."

~~~
empath75
When I used to work at a grocery store, they came in once a week to buy day
old bread to feed the animals on their land. She's actually a very sweet lady,
and he was a cranky old bastard who once confused one of my co workers wu tang
clan tattoo for thr ku klux klan and had a really awkward conversation.

~~~
Zuider
He was a Jewish born Neo-Nazi according to the article. That would make for a
very awkward conversation indeed.

------
citricsquid
As a child I received some Sea Monkeys as a gift, after growing them for a
couple of days I started to notice the number of individuals shrinking and the
remaining Sea Monkeys growing quite large, eventually I was left with just one
"Sea Monkey" that was almost an inch long. Turns out I'd been given Triops,
cannibalistic crustaceans, not cute little harmless Sea Monkeys.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triops_longicaudatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triops_longicaudatus)

~~~
SwellJoe
Dude, you had a living fossil as a pet! That's possibly cooler than Sea
Monkeys. (Though, I enjoyed having Sea Monkeys as a kid.)

------
hourislate
On the topic of Sea Monkeys, did anyone ever buy that submarine in the back of
comics where the Sea Monkeys were sold? I couldn't sleep as a kid wishing I
had the $5 to buy that submarine and take it to the lake.

~~~
harywilke
Thanks for the memories. it never worked as well as you imagined it would.
there are plenty of videos on youtube of it. just search for 'baking soda sub'

~~~
Zuider
You can also buy baking soda powered fish lures.

------
Aelinsaar
The business of disappointing and deceiving young children is still
surprisingly profitable I see.

~~~
larrik
What do you mean? My son setup his sea monkey set nearly a year ago, and it's
still in my office going strong, with only the slightest maintenance.

~~~
logfromblammo
Would your son rather have a miniature brine shrimp aquarium, or an Amazing
Live Sea-Monkey habitat?

The branded humbug is specifically designed to make the mundane seem more
interesting, even to the point where someone would actually _buy_ brine shrimp
_as pets_.

As a business, breeding brine shrimp for the toy market alone is worthless.
You also have to package the reason for someone to buy them, which is the
story that makes them a catalyst for the imagination.

It's why you can take two copies of the same doll, dress one up as Mr.
Milquetoast, forensic accountant, and the other as Muscles McUltrahero,
beloved comic book character, and see such a dramatic difference in sales.

Obviously, Big Time Toys saw no value in the product itself, as they changed
suppliers. The _entire_ value of the box is in the brand, which they stopped
paying for.

As much as I enjoy the schadenfreude that I feel when I see con artists cheat
each other, I have to come down of the side of the underdog with the moxie to
sell people fluff and nonsense and still make them love it. Big Time isn't
selling Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys (TM) any more. They're selling cheap Chinese
brine shrimp.

~~~
Aelinsaar
And they are doing it to the only group on the planet who can be deceived by
that kind of marketing (little kids), while other people smile and look at it
as a magical thing. It's not. It's such a notorious borderline scam that an
early South Park episode touched on it.

Rather than $5-$10 million a year in brine shrimp sales.

~~~
cm2012
It's harmless, though. Considering nothing in life has an value at all except
how it makes humans feel, as long as it makes people net happier than sadder
(which it seems to do), then Sea Monkeys are a moral positive.

~~~
unclebucknasty
I was pretty disappointed with my Sea Monkeys. Can't imagine I was alone in
that.

------
killbrad
That was a beautifully written piece.

~~~
sthielen
My thoughts as well. The author does a wonderfully subtle job exposing that
strange naivete that seems so universal to the human experience. It's no
surprise that he's a contributor to "This American Life," which I find often
hits on that same sentiment. Thanks for sharing this article, OP.

------
zafka
I bought some Sea Monkeys last year. Suddenly they are even more special! For
some reason, I never set up the tank, but now I am going to dig them up and
set up the tank. But first I need to check netflix.....

------
sjwright
Am I the only one who clicked on the article expecting a discussion about the
Mozilla suite?

~~~
mirimir
No :) Debian's no-non-free-stuff build, actually. Now extinct.

------
zyxley
The tl;dr for the long article:

The company that owns the Sea-Monkeys trademark, Transcience, contracted with
another company, Big Time Toys, to handle the 'fishbowl' kits, marketing, and
distribution. Transcience continued to provide the brine shrimp, which the
company says are specially bred to handle the rigors of postal transport
better than other brine shrimp.

Big Time Toys had the option to buy out Transcience completely for $10
million, with $5 million as a lump sum and the rest paid as a percentage of
yearly profit.

In 2013, Big Time Toys stopped paying towards the $10 million, stopped buying
the brine shrimp from Transcience (they switched to Chinese suppliers), and
kept using the Sea-Monkeys name for their products.

Big Time Toys claims that the money they've paid Transcience for brine shrimp
counts for the buyout, and that they now own Transcience (and its trademarks).

~~~
biot
It's a charming story that ought to be read in its entirety rather than being
reduced to a dry, Reuters-like press release.

~~~
personjerry
I think it depends on the person reading. The article ran on a tad long for
me, with too much backstory; I was more interested in the technical story and
I appreciated the tl;dr.

