8 ms·

The Battle Over the Sea Monkey Fortune

120 points by amk_ 10y ago

zyxley 10y ago
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 10y ago
  It's a charming story that ought to be read in its entirety rather than being reduced to a dry, Reuters-like press release.
  - uremog 10y ago
    There's certainly much more in TFA but I do appreciate the effort of the summary.
  - personjerry 10y ago
    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.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  I really wonder how many companies have done this. They enter into an agreement for a buyout and then after a series of say 3 or 4 payments simply declare they own the company now and start using the trademarks and logo and effectively push out the original company. If I owned a small company and was engaged in some form of agreement like this I'd be petrified something similar would happen.
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    That's why you have to make sure you have a good contract with all potential what-ifs covered. Then the big company will have to find a what-if that you didn't cover and if you're luck it will be ridiculous enough that you won't need a massive legal team to defend your agreement. Either that or you go into it just hoping to get all of the money, but you make sure that the up-front money is enough to keep you floating down the river.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
The business of disappointing and deceiving young children is still surprisingly profitable I see.
- larrik 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
    - SiVal 10y ago
      I guess we can infer from the name that Muscles McUltrahero is a full-stack web dev, which undoubtedly boosts sales.
      - dipnuggetron 10y ago
        Don't poach my ninja rockstar.
killbrad 10y ago
That was a beautifully written piece.
- sthielen 10y ago
  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.
oniony 10y ago
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."
- searine 10y ago
  And that's not even mentioning the fact that the husband was an ethnically Jewish Nazi.
- empath75 10y ago
  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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zuider 10y ago
    He was a Jewish born Neo-Nazi according to the article. That would make for a very awkward conversation indeed.
zafka 10y ago
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.....
hourislate 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    You can also buy baking soda powered fish lures.
- Loughla 10y ago
  Oh god. That's right. I just KNEW I could RULE THE SEAS with that sub.
citricsquid 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.)
- Zuider 10y ago
  A well meaning family friend gave my son Sea Monkeys for his birthday years ago. When my wife discovered they were really vermin, they had an unfortunate accident.
sjwright 10y ago
Am I the only one who clicked on the article expecting a discussion about the Mozilla suite?
- mirimir 10y ago
  No :) Debian's no-non-free-stuff build, actually. Now extinct.

120 points by amk_ 10y ago

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 10y ago
It's a charming story that ought to be read in its entirety rather than being reduced to a dry, Reuters-like press release.
- uremog 10y ago
  There's certainly much more in TFA but I do appreciate the effort of the summary.
- personjerry 10y ago
  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.
at-fates-hands 10y ago
I really wonder how many companies have done this. They enter into an agreement for a buyout and then after a series of say 3 or 4 payments simply declare they own the company now and start using the trademarks and logo and effectively push out the original company. If I owned a small company and was engaged in some form of agreement like this I'd be petrified something similar would happen.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  That's why you have to make sure you have a good contract with all potential what-ifs covered. Then the big company will have to find a what-if that you didn't cover and if you're luck it will be ridiculous enough that you won't need a massive legal team to defend your agreement. Either that or you go into it just hoping to get all of the money, but you make sure that the up-front money is enough to keep you floating down the river.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

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

larrik 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
  - SiVal 10y ago
    I guess we can infer from the name that Muscles McUltrahero is a full-stack web dev, which undoubtedly boosts sales.
    - dipnuggetron 10y ago
      Don't poach my ninja rockstar.

killbrad 10y ago

That was a beautifully written piece.

sthielen 10y ago
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.

oniony 10y ago

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."

searine 10y ago
And that's not even mentioning the fact that the husband was an ethnically Jewish Nazi.
empath75 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Zuider 10y ago
  He was a Jewish born Neo-Nazi according to the article. That would make for a very awkward conversation indeed.

zafka 10y ago

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.....

hourislate 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  You can also buy baking soda powered fish lures.
Loughla 10y ago
Oh god. That's right. I just KNEW I could RULE THE SEAS with that sub.

citricsquid 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.)
Zuider 10y ago
A well meaning family friend gave my son Sea Monkeys for his birthday years ago. When my wife discovered they were really vermin, they had an unfortunate accident.

sjwright 10y ago

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

mirimir 10y ago
No :) Debian's no-non-free-stuff build, actually. Now extinct.