Licensing – Sea-Monkey Codex

Licensed Products

Apparel

During the 1990s and early 2000s, we saw a variety of official Sea-Monkey branded apparel in the market, mainly in the form of T-shirts.

Red shirt featuring Joe Orlando’s 1970s artwork. Produced by Stanley DeSantis. | Online listing image.

Blue shirt featuring the Sea-Monkeys logotype & swimming Sea-Monkeys. | Online listing image.

Navy blue shirt featuring the hatching Sea-Monkey (Hatchey) illustration. | Online listing image.

Around 2003, MJC Corporation from San Francisco entered into a licensing agreement to produce men’s boxer shorts & loungewear featuring the Sea-Monkey IP.

Outside of those early mockup images available, we have no documentation or photos of the end product on our end for these MJC products. We were unable to procure any information about their production or retail availability.

The apparels presented here and the Seaweedies shirts produced in the 2020s by Transcience are the only officially sanctioned apparels & designs produced. Be wary of the “artists” and copyright-infringing shops selling bootleg products using the brand’s imagery and trademarks.

Splish!: A Look Ma, No Hands™ Guide to the Sea Monkeys' Greatest Show

Written by Tom Johnston
Illustrated by Bob Staake
Designed by Donna Hagerty-Payne

Featuring Nickelodeon® branding, this children’s board book was published circa 1996 and was part of the Look Ma, No Hands™ series from Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division. Splish! was focused on Sea-Monkeys, and its 48 pages included instructions, information, and various activities to do.

The Ultimate Guide to Sea-Monkeys® by Susan Barclay

Susan Barclay’s The Ultimate Guide to Sea-Monkeys® is a quirky, entertaining book about the author’s passion for Sea-Monkeys, its community, and the inspiration the brand provided for many of the subjects presented in it.

Susan Barclay, aka The Sea-Monkey Lady, was the person behind seamonkeyworship.com, which, during those early days of the Internet, was the go-to Sea-Monkey website that provided a trove of information and entertainment about the world of Sea-Monkeys®.

In retrospect, this book gives us great insight into the world of Sea-Monkeys and its fandom during those early years of the Internet.

Funko’s Sea-Monkeys® Wacky Wobbler™

The Sea-Monkeys® Wacky Wobbler™ was a bobblehead released in the early 2000s by the then still relatively new Funko Inc.

The standard, mass-produced bobblehead version consisted of a pink Sea-Monkey with blue shorts. This mass-market version received two slight variants: one was a windowed boxed variant with Funko’s website at the bottom, which we can deduce was the standard retail store shelf variant & the other variation consisted of a closed box featuring a photo of the bobblehead and the alternate product name, “Shakey.” The latter variant was exclusively sold via the Sea-Monkey online store at the time.

In 2005, Funko produced a glow-in-the-dark variant as part of their Funatic Collector’s Series. That run apparently consisted of only 200 pieces, with a few of them being exclusively made available at San Diego Comic-Con that year.

In 2008, Funko released a Comic-Con exclusive bobblehead of their mascot, Freddy Funko, featuring the same body as seen in the Sea-Monkey figure. Named Sea Freddy, this figure saw a solid colored variant, of which only 144 were produced, and a glow-in-the-dark variant, of which only 24 were made.

Buy-Rite's Grow-in-the-Water Sea-Monkey®

In 2003, Buy-Rite Inc. from New Jersey produced a Sea-Monkey® toy that would expand up to six times its size after 72 hours of being placed in water. This small toy came in blister packaging and was available in a variety of colors.

Majestic Studios’ Sea-Monkey Action Figures

Announced in 2003 and released circa 2004, Majestic Studios produced a line of Sea-Monkey action figures, in which their design was based on the anthropomorphic Sea-Monkeys seen primarily in the comic ad pages.

The line consisted of a mom, a dad, a daughter, a son, a sea-horse & a snail. These action figures were sold in various configurations that came either in clamshell packaging shaped like an aquarium bowl or in a smaller one shaped like a test tube. The packaging featured retro elements from the brand’s 1970s identity.

The larger, bowl-shaped packaging had two variants: one that included the father, son & the seahorse, while the other variant included the mother, daughter & the snail. In the smaller, test tube-shaped packaging, the father & mother were packaged separately, while the son & daughter were sold together. These individual variants didn’t include either the seahorse or the snail.

Lionel’s Sea-Monkeys Motorized Aquarium Car

In 2004, Lionel, which specialized in motorized toy trains and railroad models, produced a Sea-Monkeys-themed motorized toy railcar. With a blue body, this railroad car featured vintage Sea-Monkey imagery, an illuminated interior, and a transparent rotating strip illustrated with Sea-Monkeys, which gave the illusion of swimming when powered up.

While the word “aquarium” is part of the product’s name, this is not a waterproof product nor an actual habitat for any aquatic life. This “aquarium” car was part of a line of aquatic-themed train wagons produced by Lionel.

For more specific details and technical information, one can check Lionel’s official page for this item: https://www.lionel.com/products/sea-monkeys-motorized-aquarium-car-6-36780/