Posted on 04/15/2016 9:09:23 AM PDT by DeathBeforeDishonor1
The way the lawyer William Timmons described the case, it was practically a newsreel melodrama, with a helpless widow being menaced by a heartless tycoon. The story began with the widow, whose name is Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut. She is a onetime heir to the considerable fortune still generated by her husband Harold’s iconic invention, Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys. As her lawyer told it, she was now isolated, cash-starved, often without electricity or running water on a palatial estate on the Potomac River in southern Maryland. Having retreated to a single room in the old mansion, she was prepping for her second freezing winter, barricaded by thick quilts, her bed next to a fireplace stocked with split wood. From this bunker, Signorelli von Braunhut has been waging legal combat against Sam Harwell, chief executive of a big-time toy company whose name seems straight out of a Chuck Jones cartoon: Big Time Toys.
In his tiny office in Sayville, on Long Island, Timmons spoke in clipped, near-noir tones, handing me a five-page summary of the case, eager to executive-produce the plotline. “The heart and soul of this case is trademark infringement,” he said. Signorelli von Braunhut “believes in the concept of justice,” he continued, “and when you have that on your side, then you can get through the day.”
A few years after her husband’s death in 2003, Signorelli von Braunhut licensed out part of the labor of his multimillion dollar Sea-Monkey enterprise, mostly packaging and distribution, to Big Time. If you’ve ever been 8 years old, then you know that Sea-Monkeys arrive in a small plastic aquarium with several small packets that include the tiny brine-shrimp critters, which reanimate once you add water — by way of a secret formula that Signorelli von Braunhut keeps locked in a vault in Manhattan.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yeah, last Friday night was great.
My cousin fed his to his fish.
A Jewish Neo Nazi was the push behind Sea Monkeys?
Ok, I guess that wins today.
Hey, any port in a storm, right?
It sounds like a side plot in a Mel Brooks movie.
Yay, Plankton!
Or Blake Edwards...
Epic ! I want the movie rights!! This had me ROFL, gasping in delight at the deadpan delivery. Widowed and cruelly defrauded Sea Monkey heiress forced to live in poverty—as a prepper, no less!—in her mansion! Thread of the day! Thanks for posting.
From the story:
“At times he seemed uninterested, not so much in Sea Monkeys, but maybe in the law in general, or just in the wanton quotidian reality into which we are all born....”
I love this forum....
This is the best writing in a newspaper I’ve read in years.
L
According to Wikipedia, the original “Sea-Monkey” kits involved an initial “water purification” packets that actually had some eggs in them. Then when additional eggs were added 24 hours later, hatchlings were seen right away. In the test of the Big Time version described here it sounds like something was missing in the kit.
From that description I presume that some poor GI discovered them hatching in his cup during WW II.
I don’t know about that. It seemed like a Hitt piece to me.
He understood that when you pit humbug against harsh cold reality, reality doesn’t stand a chance. Knowing this explains so much — World Wrestling, Taco Bell, Donald Trump.
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