Harold von Braunhut (born Harold Nathan Braunhut; March 31, 1926 – November 28, 2003), also known as Hendrik von Braun, was an American mail-order marketer, inventor, and white supremacist. He was most famous as the creator and seller of various novelty products marketed towards children, most notably Sea-Monkeys. Von Braunhut held 195 patents and his products were regularly and aggressively marketed in comic books; his products were often misleadingly advertised. Products he marketed included Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters, Crazy Crabs, and Invisible Goldfish. Some of his most well-known inventions were the X-ray specs, glasses which create an optical distortion, but which were falsely marketed as letting wearers see through flesh and clothes, and Sea-Monkeys, which were brine shrimp, but were advertised as humanoid figures; Sea-Monkeys became very popular and sold well, though von Braunhut was at one point sued over their marketing. Von Braunhut also gained notoriety for his racial and political views. Despite his Jewish upbringing, he was closely associated with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups; he was a member of both the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, and was a priest in and the Maryland leader of the Aryan Nations. In 1984, he was listed among a group of "outstanding Aryan nationalist leaders" at an Aryan Nations congress. In 1988, both his involvement with the white supremacist movement and his Jewish heritage were publicized. Despite this, von Braunhut continued to be involved in the white supremacist movement.
Early life Harold Nathan Braunhut was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 31, 1926, to Jeanette Cohen and Edward Braunhut. His father owned a printing shop, while his mother's family worked in the toy business. He had one brother, Bernard. His family was Jewish, and Braunhut was raised religiously Jewish. He received a bar mitzvah. Braunhut's family moved to New York City in 1931, where he grew up. He attended P.S. 26 high school in New York. Braunhut attended the City University of New York, then Columbia University from 1945 to 1946, but did not graduate. Braunhut married Charlotte Judelshon in 1955, with whom he had a son. They divorced in 1968. His mother was killed in a car accident in 1960.
Career Braunhut began his career as a talent manager for novelty acts. He managed a showman (Henry Lamore or Henri LaMothe) whose act consisted of diving 40 feet (12 m) into a children's wading pool filled with only 1 foot (0.30 m) of water, and the mentalist The Amazing Dunninger. Braunhut also raced motorcycles and cars under the name "The Green Hornet", and was for a time a television producer. He added "von" to his name sometime in the 1950s for a more "Germanic" sound. He went on to became an inventor that decade; he used an aggressive comic book advertising campaign to sell an assortment of products, many of which were misleadingly advertised. His business ventures earned him millions of dollars, though he was known as "not easy to work with". He began dating Yolanda Signorelli, who was then in show business, shortly after he divorced his first wife. They met while she was in the audience of a television program he was taping for Dunninger; she went to work for him and with him on many of his business ventures. They were married 12 years later on February 14, 1980, as part of a mass wedding at the Manhattan Playboy Club. The Playboy Club had advertised a competition where the winners would get a free wedding ceremony and honeymoon; the entrants were asked to write in a brief message about why they wanted to be married. Signorelli and von Braunhut were noted as having a particularly elaborate response; Signorelli had tried to convince von Braunhut to marry her for several years, and he agreed to if they won the contest. They had a daughter.
Sea-Monkeys
His most famous creation was Sea-Monkeys, which were tiny brine shrimp eggs that "came to life" when water was added. The idea to sell brine shrimp as pets occurred to him in 1957; the exact story of while he was in a pet store and saw brine shrimp sold as pet food, or alternatively saw a fisherman using them as bait. He was interested by their ability to spring back to life in the presence of water after a period of dormancy. He began marketing them through his company Transcience Corporation 1960 as "Instant Life", advertised almost entirely in comic books; they were not initially a success. In 1962, he renamed the product "Sea-Monkeys", which improved sales. Working with the marine biologist Anthony D'Agostino, together they selectively bred a hybrid variety of shrimp to be more appropriate for being pets, larger and hardier. It was sold with three parts: "Sea-Monkey Water-Purifier", "Instant Life Sea-Monkey Eggs", and "Sea-Monkey Growth Food". Comic book advertisements for the Sea-Monkeys showed them as cartoon humanoid figures, not shrimp, and boasted of their abilities, saying they could be trained, be hypnotized, and race. Alongside the brine shrimp, he sold several accessories for the Sea-Monkeys, such as toys, aphrodisiacs, Sea-Monkey vitamins, a plastic aquarium, a circus, and an underwater racetrack. He wrote the Official Sea-Monkey Handbook, where Braunhut told fantastical tales of what he claimed the Sea-Monkeys were actually doing. Von Braunhut was once sued over the product allegedly being fraudulent due to misleading marketing, but won the suit. Billions of Sea-Monkeys were sold and they garnered generated fan websites, a television series, and a video game. Astronaut John Glenn took 400 million of them into space with him in 1998.
Other inventions and environmentalism
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
