Sea-Monkeys ad (1978)
Enter the wonderful world of amazing live Sea-Monkeys®, the real live fun-pets you grow yourself
Sea-Monkeys were a novelty aquarium pet invented by Harold von Braunhut (infamous for his a close association with white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations) in 1972. Initially called “Instant Life”, the name was changed to Sea-Monkeys in 1962. Von Braunhut was also the creator of the X-Ray Specs. This ad from 1978 features Cooper Black caps and several styles of Helvetica. From Wikipedia:
Sea-Monkeys were intensely marketed in comic books throughout the 1960s and early 1970s using illustrations by the comic-book illustrator Joe Orlando. These showed humanoid animals that bear no resemblance to the crustaceans. Many purchasers were disappointed by the dissimilarity and by the short lifespan of the animals. Von Braunhut is quoted as stating: “I think I bought something like 3.2 million pages of comic book advertising a year. It worked beautifully.”
“Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia”
1 Comment on “Sea-Monkeys ad (1978)”
Matthew Carter’s Helvetica Compressed is definitely being used for the “So Eager” portion.