Review: Silly Impulse Buy!

Yes, it’s designed for kids. But it’s well designed and a fine little watch. It has a Swiss ETA quartz movement and is assembled in Switzerland. It has a sapphire crystal and 100M water resistance.

The bezel is bi-directional and has neither diver nor time zone markings, instead offering blo(c)ks of 5, 10, 15, and 30 minutes to help kids get a sense for those durations. I find them useful for focused work blocks and timing durations of student lab exercises in the software classes I teach.

The name comes from the width of the case (33mm) which is a glossy finish castor bean-based bioplastic. The lugs are molded to include the cross bar for the recycled woven textile velcro closure strap.

Clever design dominates the dial. Hours are marked as blo(c)ks to indicate the full duration the hour hand spends in that hour. The hour hand is finished in the same shade of grey as the hour blocks. The minute hand is a darker shade, closer to the minute marking outside the hours. The second hand is black and skeleton to stand out from the other hands. The precision with which the hands hit the indices is very good, better than several other grown-up quartz watches I have.

The left-hand crown takes a bit of adjustment but keeps it from digging into the smaller wrists of kids.

For me, it’s distinct and unique. Inspired by several recent WC posts re: “fun” watches, I decided it’s more interesting than another common plastic Swiss watch, so I took the plunge. Despite an initial moment of doubt, I’m really happy with it.

It is small but my wrist is smallish, at 6.5 in (165mm). Looks small to my eye but photos seems to make it look larger.

It’s same size as my son’s childhood Timex and 1mm smaller than my vintage Vantage, which is the same size as Swatch Gent models. Bezel means smaller dial. The bezel also makes it taller, so proportions are a bit odd. But I like the look. As to whether I can pull it off, as few notice watches these days, it doesn’t really matter. It’s fun. It’s functional. And I like it.