Harold von Braunhut (March 31, 1926 – November 28, 2003; born Harold Nathan Braunhut), also known as Hendrik von Braun, was an American mail-order marketer, inventor, and white supremacist, 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. He received a bar mitzvah. 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. His mother was killed in a car accident in 1960. and the mentalist The Amazing Dunninger. and was for a time a television producer. They had a daughter. 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. He set up a wildlife conservation area in Maryland, the Montrose Wildlife Sanctuary. When this became threatened by a new proposed development in the area, von Braunhut became a leader of and the spokesman for a group called SWORD (Save Wildlife, Oppose Riviera Development), which protested the development. He declared his intention to market lobsters as pets in 1989, In his study, he displayed fascist materials, including an inscribed image of Benito Mussolini and a poster signed by Hermann Göring. He spoke in the place of Butler in a February 1988 meeting on repealing the Fourteenth Amendment. and noted that the manufacturer of the Kiyoga supported him financially, with a portion of sales proceeds from the Kiyoga going to Butler; at the time, Butler was facing federal charges for sedition, though he was later acquitted. Journalists connected this to von Braunhut. He was also parodically portrayed by Thomas Lennon in the comedy film Unfrosted (2024) as a German "taste pilot" with a Nazi past reminiscent of Wernher von Braun.