Monday 14 May 2018

The Return of the Sea Monkeys

Me yearning for sea monkeys
I’ve talked about some of the more outrageous classified AD’s in old magazines before but this week I saw a Sea Monkeys set  – seeing the creatures (thingies) on sale reminded me of how they once seemed almost magical to me.


You see I was brought up in a small town called Gilfach Goch, which was three miles and the next left,  after the back end of beyond. Now as a kid growing up in the Seventies I had the usual boyish interests of the time. I wore t-shirts , flared trousers, bumper training shoes, and rode a Chopper bicycle while sucking on a spangle.Back then I had a mania for comic books. In those days the British comics – Battle, Action, 2000AD were my favourites but I would also buy the American titles when I had enough pocket money left over.

Now one thing that was always advertised in American comics at the time were a mysterious thing called sea monkeys. They looked so cool - little creatures that lived in a fish bowl and set up elaborate societies - least that's what the adverts suggested.  These guys looked so cool but it was frustrating as hell because there was nowhere for a British kid to get hold of them - it seemed that America had all the best tricks.

Man, having some sea monkeys of my own was a dream but alas, one that was tragically out of reach.

They looked so cute on the packaging and I know that, even as a kid, I should have known better but that was exactly how I imagined them to look. The AD's only cemented this delusion.




"Sea-Monkeys® are a true miracle of nature. They exist in suspended animation inside their tiny eggs for many years. The instant-life crystals, in which the eggs are enclosed, preserve their viability and help to extend still further their un-hatched life span! Sea-Monkeys are real Time-Travelers asleep in biological time capsules for their strange journey into the future!"
 
Anyway the years went by - hairstyles changed, flared trousers vanished, my Chopper was replaced by a drop handle - by this time I had acne and a new found interest in girls but still in the back of my mind I had this unfulfilled desire for some sea monkeys.


I eventually came across some in a joke shop in Blackpool when I was about sixteen - far too old for that sort of thing. But I bought them and couldn't wait to get them home and place them in a tank for the creatures to hatch. I started thinking up names for them and all of a sudden I was that young kid again.

Anyway they eventually hatched, were too small to see unless you held them up to the light and squinted and I quickly got fed up of them. Turns out they are actually a species of brine shrimp and they do not look like the illustrations on the packets. They're kind of boring and merely looked like tiny specks floating in water. I think I got drunk one day on booze stolen from a friend's parents and actually drunk my small bowl of water, sea monkeys and all.

And I tell you another thing those X-ray specs that  allowed you to see through women's clothing didn't work either.


Sea monkeys are still available - in fact a bowl full of the critters are currently residing on my kitchen windowsill.

Check out the web site
 

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