Episode 144 - Plastic Watches

Published on Wed, 28 Jul 2021 19:44:19 -0700

Synopsis

The podcast discusses the history and evolution of plastic watches, tracing their origins back to military watches in the 1960s and the Fortis Flipper in 1967. It covers the rise of plastic watches in the 1980s with brands like Swatch and Casio, and their widespread adoption due to affordability and ease of production. The hosts also share their picks for some of their favorite plastic watches, including the Tag Heuer Formula One, Shinola Sea Creatures, and Marathon Navigator models.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello, fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. You're listening to 40 in 20, The Watch Clicker podcast with your host, Andrew. I'm a good friend, Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett, how are you?
Everett I'm doing well. Yeah. I'm going to have some beer, which is nice. That's a good part of the evening. It's a good part of the evening. Sitting down for a beer.
Andrew Yeah.
Everett Sitting down is kind of your jam these days. Sitting down is very much my jam. Yeah, so I have some news. I broke my running streak. A three-year running streak. For good reason. That's now broken and gone. All that work just down the drain. Yeah, I mean the work isn't gone, but it's a little sad. So yeah, the worst news is that I've kind of blown up my knee. Probably the worst injury I've ever had in my life. Yeah. No, that would track. Yeah. So, um, I'm not walking really. Although you're hobbling, I'm hobbling, although I shouldn't be. Uh, yeah. And awaiting awaiting an MRI to see what kind of surgery I get. There's some chance I don't have to get surgery, but it seems it's small. It's small.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. So Surgical knee intervention though is super refined, really common and really good. Yeah. Yeah.
Everett I mean the, depending on which surgery I get, it's either a, you know, six week to, you know, six to eight week recovery or maybe a four to six month recovery. So that's still, we don't know about that.
Andrew Uh, that's a bit of a bummer. But when I saw you on Thursday, yeah. You couldn't even move.
Everett Yeah. No, it's definitely gotten better. And you gave me some good peace of mind too. You were like, this, this is the trauma and this will get better. Yeah. So yeah. Uh, that's, I mean, it makes like getting up and getting another cup of coffee a little bit more manageable, but much beyond that, I'm still pretty useless.
Andrew That's not much different than before though.
Everett It stinks. It's a major lifestyle change, right? It's like, July and I can't golf and I can't run and all these things are like my whole life are, are not there right now. So that's, it takes some adjustment. But with that said, pain is manageable. You're gonna have to learn to gear fish again. Yep. Perhaps, perhaps. Uh, yeah, pain is manageable and I'm, you know, drinking beer and eating cookies and taking, you know, THC gummies a lot.
Andrew You're living most people's dream. What, you mean I don't have to do that?
Everett Sweet. The doctor was like, um, so I went to the doctor and then I had to go back to the doctor. And the second time I went to the doctor, um, I'm a little leery about asking for painkillers, but also there's some pain. And I was like, so my plan for pain management is Advil and gummies. He was like, yeah, it seems, it seems super reasonable to me.
Andrew You're on the right track, my friend. So, but yeah, how are you, Andrew? I'm good. I smell a little bit combustion engine-y. I don't know if you can smell it. You do. Yeah, I smelled fuel on you. Yeah, a little fuel-y. I went and took a boat ride today for a boat that I think I'm going to buy. You're buying a boat? Yeah. What's funny is it's bigger than the boat that I sold Because I was concerned I wouldn't have enough storage space at this house. Yeah. But it's a very different kind of boat. Yeah. Different kind of boat. It's a motorboat and it's more family friendly. I think that's right. It's got space for napping kids. So I'm looking at buying a 17 foot Cuddy cabin boat. And I went and met with the current owner today and got to take a boat ride. he opened it up to show it off because this is like it's it's not a sale he's looking forward to making it's it's very much a he told me while we were on the boat that he's about to close on a house and needs the liquid cash for closing costs and when he left his house with the boat he told his two sons who were i don't know like eight and ten ish i facebook stalked him so i'm familiar with the family photos of him on the boat and see it running all summer. And, um, he said they both like were distraught. Don't sell the boat. Don't sell a boat. So I kind of made me feel bad. I felt like he was trying to talk me out of buying the boat while I was talking to him about buying the boat. But it was a lot of fun. It's going to be perfectly adequate room for family days on the water for bro days on the river in the winter fishing salmon and pulling crab pots, it's gonna be pretty dope. So I think we settled on it. I think we're gonna try to buy this boat. Work out storage later.
Everett The trailer's in good shape and everything?
Andrew Everything's in great shape. The guy is like this weird, meticulous, like does it all himself and does a really good job. He had the motor professionally serviced and a couple other things professionally done. know he redid some of the upholstery and I couldn't find he looked at me like I was weird because I brought a little a little bag with a tool kit in it and I was pulling everything open and like digging my head in there with a flashlight and I was like I can't find a single drop of moisture in here and you had this on the water yesterday why isn't it wet he's like we just take really good care of it and while he was doing that he bent over from the helm and picked up a pine needle that was on the carpet and threw it overboard. I was like, Oh, that's who we're dealing with right now. There weren't stains. This is original 1989 upholstery carpeting. There aren't stains in it. Nice. I don't know what the condition it was when he got it, but it's certain like this thing is there's some, some upholstery issues, right? That you'd expect with a 31, 32 year old boat. But this guy is a freak. What? He's exactly the guy to be buying a boat from.
Everett Yeah, that's great. That's what you want.
Andrew Yeah. So anyway, I got to be out on the boat today. He had a kind of a weird friend that was a riot, but like just kind of a weird friend that came to help him. And I don't know if he was just like, oh, they were already together or he just brought him because selling things on Craigslist is kind of sketchy. But yeah, it was a blast. Like just to be out on the water with a couple of dudes. I don't know. Yeah, it was fun. It's awesome. Yeah. So I didn't get to spend as much time on the water as I would have liked, but you know, it's not my boat and he doesn't know me. So. Well, good. That's exciting. So that was a direct on your boat. That was my afternoon. And I spent, yeah, don't do that. I spent, you know, most of my day like doing all the, all the research that a person possibly could in a day. And I've spent, you know, a couple of weeks preceding this doing it, but some like fine tuning of what I'm looking for, red flags, problems, trying to talk myself out of it. I've been so far unsuccessful. Good. There's a couple other things that I need to talk myself out of that have come up in the last couple of days too, but.
Everett Well, I'm really excited for our new boat.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. It'll be good. You have more space in your garage.
Everett Well, hey, you know, uh, I think we should get into it because we are talking about watches and we got a lot to talk about. We've got a big one. We we've got a big one.
Andrew We're talking 50 to 60 millimeter pilot watches today. I want a big one, huge, everything you got.
Everett That was a wonderful life. That's it. Yeah. Okay. So we're talking about plastic watches and I've so full disclosure, I researched this episode. Sometimes Andrew does research. Sometimes I do research. This is an Everett. So I may talk more than you want me to today. I'm sorry about that in advance. Played on two X. I'm sorry. Um, I said, I sent Andrew approximately 45 pages of notes. Yeah. Uh, earlier today. I'm sorry.
Andrew Again, Andrew, I'm sorry for those of you who have iPhones. Um, there's a threshold that your iPhone won't show it all in one message. You have to actually click on it and expand the window. And even that was like scrolling through a day or so of text messages with someone you text a lot with. You have those people that you text all day. That was, that was what this, this note page was. And I was like, okay, this tracks, he's laid up, he's, he's stuck stationary and this is a healthy outlet. So I approve.
Everett So we're talking about plastic watches today. Yes. Which is a, which is, this is a topic that I, I had sort of proposed. I pitched to Andrew like three weeks ago and Andrew was kind of like, cause people make fun of me for liking plastic digitals, right? Andrew was kind of like, I don't see it. Uh, I mean maybe there's an episode there. We'll see. So I just basically killed him with knowledge mate. I put so much knowledge together. He proved it that he had to say yes.
Andrew Yeah. Also I was otherwise engaged.
Everett So, so there's a lot, you know, plastics are unavoidable today. Everything has plastics. Omega movements have plastics.
Andrew Everything does.
Everett Yeah. Everything has plastics by and large.
Andrew Right. But people also make plastic like aftermarket bezel covers out of plastic to protect your Rolex bezels. That's right.
Everett But there was a time not really all that long ago where a plastics kind of were in development, right? And we didn't have, uh, the amount of plastics we have today. Uh, but also where they just hadn't made their way into general use. So it wasn't an obvious, that people thought about when in products. And so watches, watches in particular, really didn't have plastics incorporated into them until fairly recently.
Andrew Not in the life cycle of a watch. Yeah. But in recent history, in memory, like memorable history.
Everett Yeah, that's right. So I think, I think that I have tracked plastic watches down to approximately 1964. Uh, and, and please recognize I'm not an expert on this topic. We're never an expert on the topics we talk about. So no, there is an extremely high possibility in an episode like today's where there are things we don't know about, where we're going to make statements that are false and we don't know it. Please feel free to correct us on this stuff.
Andrew We're also going to slip in some known lies that you can feel free to correct us on also.
Everett Yeah, well, we're going to talk about at least one known lie. Yeah. If we make a misstatement or whatever, feel free to correct us. And actually this episode, I kind of like it because there's not a lot of research on this topic. Nobody as far as I can tell is really talking about this or writing about this topic. It's a topic that interests me. Maybe it interests Andrew a little bit less.
Andrew Oh, it certainly does. Yeah, but everyone makes fun of me for liking plastic watches. So when you're like, I want a plastic watch episode, I'm like the people don't. So I think we're about to prove you wrong. I think you want one. You want one. This is the episode you didn't know you wanted.
Everett You want one and the one you want might be different than the one you think you want. So really plastic watches are primarily started and this might not surprise you, but in the military military application is where we first start to see plastic watches really in common use, um, and in a specific, in a specific watch or family of watches, which are the watches that come out of military standard, M I L dash W dash four, six, three, seven, four, which is maybe the most, uh, prolific military spec watch of all time. And, and that is because it's actually like seven or eight different military specs. So rather than being one, it's several different specs. Initially developed in 64, 46374s were revised a bunch of times between 1964 and 92. So you've got the original 46374, and then the second iteration is the A, and then you get all the way up through G. So there's a lot of them. It is the A, that first revision, the A revision introduced around 66, probably beginning in 67, two companies, really Westclox and Benrus, both start making plastic cased versions of the American military 46374 spec watch. under that A revision. And that really kicks off the viability of plastic as a legit material for watches. As the cost of the Vietnam War sort of started laboring on the U.S. and other countries that were involved, folks, the desire for inexpensive, disposable watches becomes higher, right? If you're issuing watches to Joe, and Joe's only in for two years maybe, and you never see Joe again. It makes sense to give Joe a cheap, effective, but cheap and borderline disposable watch.
Andrew Joe also breaks his shit. So you have to give him something that is consumable. Yes. And in the way of army or just military property, there are these tiers of property value as they are in real property to an organization. And the lowest tier is expendable. That's a pencil. That's something that through its use is exhausted. Yeah. It's just it's trash. You don't ever need to worry about it. Consumable is another item that by its use can also be destroyed or just worn out. And it's OK. We just we expect these things to wear out, get lost, get broken. And that's the expectation. We manage price for it. We manage inventory for it. And then there's tiers above that. But that's what we're looking at here. Either an expendable or a disposable or consumable end item that is issued to individuals with the express knowledge that you're never going to see it again.
Everett That's right. That's right. And it's not going to be on your property book. Yeah. It gets written off when that soldier's out. Um, and so, and so that's, and that's where we start seeing plastic watches. Really. It's pretty quick. They're still making watches out of Chrome, you know, uh, Chrome plated materials. They're still making watches out of steel, certainly in this four, six, three, seven, four iteration, but, but also plastics, increasingly plastics. And as the Vietnam war winds on and as just militaries continue to move, um, They start making these just more and more and more, and they become more and more ubiquitous and cheaper. So, you know, 67, you'll at home probably wonder, is that a quartz watch? Well, obviously not. These are all 17 jewel, by and large, 17 jewel mechanical hand crankers for quite a while, at least until the mid 80s. Speaking of our watch myth, It's in this line of watches that a very, very famous watch is introduced by Timex. So those of you who have been in watches for a while have probably seen or heard at least of the J.Crew Timex collaboration. And the J.Crew Timex collaboration is, as the self-proclaimed legend has it, a reissue of a 1940s Timex watch. This was in the J.Crew marketing material. This was just the legend. Well, turns out that's actually almost certainly utter horseshit. The truth is, the J.Crew Timex 46374 military watch is based on a 1982 Timex. And you cannot find these watches, these 1982 Timexes, Because probably, Andrew, they were never made, at least for production.
Andrew Just piloted, prototyped.
Everett They were under contract for two months with the military, and there's no evidence that Timex actually produced these watches. They prototyped them for sure, but there's zero evidence that Timex. So one of the most famous military, modern, you know, retro military watches. The J.Crew Timex is almost certainly based on a watch that didn't practically exist.
Andrew You know what that means? Tell me. It means that Timex was just flipping through the archives. They're like, we got everything ready. You want this one? Let's send it. Let's finally get this out there and we'll put a new logo on it and we'll call it good. So they might have even had the inventory. They might have been there. I mean, with a two month contract, they might have already had been sitting on liquid inventory or on hard inventory in their warehouse.
Everett Maybe and probably not. And here's why. Two months after the contract was signed, Timex ceased production of mechanical watch movements.
Andrew Right, but they might have had everything else.
Everett Maybe. But Timex knew it was ceasing production of mechanical movements for years. Yeah. before it did. So, maybe. The answer is maybe. No one knows. I mean, it could be that Timex produced a bunch of these for the military. Maybe not a bunch, but at least some. But there's very little evidence, if any.
Andrew And Joe threw them away. Yeah. They're in a landfill somewhere.
Everett So anyway, these 46374 watches, in particular, we're talking about plastic watches, you guys. Later revisions of this watch continue to get made by really, you know, the who's who of the American watchmaking industry. Waltham, Hamilton, Marathon slash Galet, obviously Marathon is a North American, we'll call them North. Benris, and a company that is kind of new to me that I had heard the name before, but not really tracked them, Stocker and Yale, which is kind of a famous maker of compasses for the United States military, lens-added compasses.
Andrew Which makes sense. That's right. That's right. That's a easy crossover.
Everett Yeah. And, and, and so the, actually I discovered, I think the next watch I'm going to buy today, which is a stalker and Yale Sandy quote, quote unquote, Sandy for 90, uh, which is a revision, uh, a revision E version of this, uh, four, six, three, seven, four watch. And I just, I saw it, I pulled it up and I was like, Oh my God, I love that watch. It's a 35 millimeter plastic case.
Andrew Are they still in production or are you going to have to buy it?
Everett No, no, I'm going to have to buy this for sure. So Revision F, this is the classic navigator, marathon navigator that we know and love. Still sold today. Stocker and Yale also made some navigator watches. They're super ugly and terrible. And there's a very good reason that Marathon is the company that survived. And then eventually Revision G, which kind of changes everything, it becomes a performance standard. So there goes the spec for 6374 watches. Now we've got performance standards and kind of everybody gets to do what they want. So that is the story of kind of the advent of plastic watches, I believe. But there's a really important caveat to this story. Because also in 1967, a Swiss company makes a plastic watch. Yeah. And I've known this for a couple of weeks now, but it still surprised the shit out of me. But Fortis makes a plastic watch in 1967.
Andrew It's surprising to me that this wasn't in the running to become the replacement for that mil-spec'd watch. Tell me more. There's already inventory. There's a reliable supply chain, single source, which makes it cheaper from a known, I mean, a different known organization. All these American companies are making them. It, in the way of government contracting, it's surprising to me that they didn't just pare down the pipeline and buy it from somebody who basically buy commercial rather than specialty made.
Everett Well, but I don't think that's really how it works. I think Fortis would have had to
Andrew Yeah, they've had to bid for it, right? There's a big process.
Everett They wouldn't even have to bid. They'd just have to make them to spec. They were spec watches, so pretty much anybody who wanted to could make them and sell them under contract to the United States military.
Andrew I'm saying it'd be cheaper to just buy what's already being produced.
Everett Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps. Well, so 1967, I think, now here's one of those I think you're going to have to correct us moments. I think Fortis makes the very first Swiss-made plastic watch. with the Florida slipper. These are originally automatic watches, 200 meters of water resistance, uh, 1967, right? They came in all of orange, purple, blue, and Navy. Uh, it's nuts. You really can't find the, the plastic automatic flippers. Um, and, and of course in 1976, they start using quartz movements. And they don't really get popular until the 1980s after Swatch and, you know, G-Shock and a bunch of other companies start doing similar things.
Andrew At the proliferation of that style of watch. This is ahead of its time.
Everett That's right. Way, way, way ahead of his time. And Andrew says this because he's holding probably a late 70s Quartz Fortis Flipper in his hand right now as we speak.
Andrew And it feels good. There's not, there's not pitting in the plastic like you'd expect. Yeah. It doesn't feel new by any means, but there's no pitting. There's no real noticeable like there's, there's some things that make it look new, right. Or they make it look used, but at a distance glance, this is what I would expect. This looked like coming out of the box.
Everett Well, and so we need to be a little clear here because I purchased this thing off of eBay and it looked whole when I purchased it. It's not. It was not whole when it got to me. The strap kind of crumbled in the box. Just turned to dust. And so, uh, you know, cautionary tale, plastic is, will break down over time. And the plastic on this did break down. With that said, the case is still good. The clasp is still good. It's actually like a housing that goes around a movement module. And so it. It is serviceable imminently, but once the plastic goes, the plastic goes and you know, I'll have to like replace it. But all that said, it's pretty neat. I'm pretty stoked. The size is good. The style is great.
Andrew It's very for those of you unfamiliar with it. You all know what the Q Timex looks like. Imagine that in plastic and a little bit thinner.
Everett Yeah. From several, several years before the Q-Timex. Uh, here, I'll pop the module out. You can see it.
Andrew Oh, it is. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a G-Shock.
Everett A little bit, but with no screws. Yeah. Yeah. It's just friction fit. And it's got like a little quartz movement module. It looks like a little quartz Heuer stopwatch or something.
Andrew This is, this is basically a pocket watch conversion kit.
Everett Yeah, that's right. That's right. So yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh, I dig it and I like it and I'm going to figure out a way to make it awesome or also the movements broken.
Andrew Uh, but you know, so I bought a watch with the plastic is in better case than the metal or in better shape than the metal. It is. Yeah, there's like, there's, I mean, except for the strap that crumbled, but, but there's some corrosion on the back of the, this isn't a case anymore. It's on the case back though. There's some corrosion. There's a little bit of corrosion and wear on the, on the crown. But that can all be cleaned. Oh, it can all be cleaned. But I'm just I'm really impressed at the at how good a shape the plastic is held up.
Everett So, you know, here's the deal. These early 46374 military watches and of course the early flippers were all mechanical auto watches because we're talking the 60s and the 70s Um, and, and thus these, I think we're probably seeing is kind of a bit of a cheap oddity, right?
Andrew A novelty.
Everett Yeah, perhaps. Right. You've got this mechanical machine inside of a plastic housing. Like, does this make sense? So, so of course, really at that point, the courts movement starts to pick up real steam and probably by way of affordability, um, watches become, uh, you know, watches become increasingly affordable and by way of that affordability, uh, more disposable really, really by the early 1980s plastics are, are everywhere in watches. Uh, it's not just for military plastic watches were just by the eighties watches. So, uh, said before this episode was a tiny bit hard to research because there's just not a ton of clarity to the timing of the advent of plastic watches. Even what we've told you thus far, these two, you know, 1967 advents, is, you know, some of this is just kind of fluffed together information. But what we do know is that once plastic started getting into watches, it happens really quick. Without a lot of pomp, These cheap peripheral developments that I think probably at the time many people sort of despised just didn't garner a lot of attention. And in the context of historical watch industry, you know, we're just not seeing any memory or recollection of those events. With that said, there are some extremely notable entries in the history of plastic watches. entries that did garner attention and rightly so. And really, besides those two that we've already discussed, the Fortis Flipper and the 46374 Revision A watches, the first sort of big, famous, plastic, all-plastic case watch we see is in 1981 with the Freestyle Shark, a watch we've talked about very recently.
Andrew Yeah. 1981. A watch that very few people know about. Yeah, I mean, relatively, yeah. Relatively. I mean, it's a lifestyle watch. You know, I would imagine people on, people in California, people in Hawaii, people in New Zealand and Australia and these really surf, heavy culture watches are familiar with this, but it's not watch people watches. It's not watch people by and large familiar with this company that isn't what it once was. It's not, it's no longer, or it has since become again, but isn't the watch enthusiast, serial hobbyist, like hardcore surf company that it was founded as, and it has returned to.
Everett Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it kind of an oddity, right? Just a couple of SoCal servers. Um, Let's start making watches that look the way we want watches to look.
Andrew That's the American micro-brand industry. That's the global micro-brand industry. How many watch companies have popped up in the last 7 to 10 years, 20 years even, that are these hardcore watchmakers first and go in and start making exactly what the market expects? Everyone's coming in. Not everyone. There's some exceptions. Most everyone is coming in as a disruptor. Like, this is the watch I want to make. This isn't available. People are coming in sideways. So I'm going to make it. Yeah, they're making, you know, up the rung entries into the industry. And that's what they did.
Everett It's gorgeous. I think I really like the story of freestyle because in many respects it's sort of like hashtag first, right? And you wouldn't give them credit for that if you didn't know.
Andrew I think even people who know aren't going to be prepared to give credit for that.
Everett So then a couple years later, uh, 1983 in, uh, I'm going to say, you know, probably successful bid to literally save the entire Swiss watchmaking industry. A couple of guys at Etta, uh, introduced the Swatch watch because we're still in the throws.
Andrew We're in, we're seeing the Swan song. of the Swiss watch industry in the throes of the courts crisis right now.
Everett In 1983 or today?
Andrew Yeah, in 1983. We're in 1983. We're traveling through time right now. We're currently not looking at the death of the Swiss watch industry. We're looking back on it and saying, God damn, they were close. How did they make it out of that?
Everett So the Swatch watch. Yeah, you know, I don't think we should talk about it very much today, uh, because I think it's an episode and I'd like to save it. It could be. Okay. So 1983, the swatch watch also 1983, this fellow from Japan and Kiko eBay unveils the G shock. It's particularly the DW dash 5,000 C the shoot a watch through a hockey goal, uh, watch, or that might be a later iteration. In any event, you guys know what the fuck I'm talking about. Yeah, I think that was later. And then one year later, 1984, Timex, an American company, introduces the Timex Triathlon, working really closely with the folks from Ironman Triathlon and marketed specifically to Ironman competitors. Timex introduces the Triathlon watch. It's a few years later that they actually gained license to the Ironman name and make, you know, one of the greatest watch lines of all time.
Andrew one of my supervisors wears a Timex Ironman that he has owned and worn since 1994. Damn. He changes out the battery when it needs changed. Here's the cool thing about this watch. It was, it was in the nineties, right? Which was the tech age with no technology to support it. Everything about the nineties is futuristic and none of it was future looking. That's right, so this watch when you purchased it came with a floppy disk.
Everett It just makes me laugh. I don't even know what the floppy disk was for.
Andrew It still makes me laugh exactly, so you plug this floppy disk. It's a three by five, so it's you know it's newer the smaller for the small floppies, not the big actual floppies. It's a three by three by five three by four. What were they? I think a three by five no three by four floppies. They weren't three by five. regardless, small hard floppy. You plug it into your computer and that's where you can program this watch. You can put phone numbers, addresses, preset alarms. Does it still require that to be programmed? No, you can manually input it, but once you were done and you had all your shit input, you clicked execute and you held your watch facing the screen and all these and he's explaining this to me and I'm just fascinated like facing the monitor screen. Yes, and it flashes it. There's a sensor at the about the twelve o'clock of this dial and it runs all kinds of lines vertically and horizontally and it programs all that shit into the watch dude.
Everett That's a fucking amazing.
Andrew It's the coolest shit ever. It's also so nineties that watch could never be made. Now it could never be made in the eighties. It's a perfect 90s watch using technology that was almost certainly already obsolete to complete a function that you definitely did not need.
Everett It's amazing.
Andrew But this watch still, so it's 2021, this 1994 Timex Ironman on the original Velcro strap is still running. He has to hard program on saving time changes. The floppy disk is long gone, but he bought that watch brand new in 1994 and has been a cop wearing that watch since 1994.
Everett It's amazing. Yes. That's amazing. You have to borrow it from him.
Andrew I'm, I, I'm, I'm gonna be like, I will give you any number of watches at all far exceed any amount of monetary value that you have into this watch. And just to let me, just let me take it home for the weekend.
Everett I suppose it's like the same technology that like the original NES zapper used.
Andrew That's exactly it. But in a watch, what, and what, what a stupid functionality. That's cool, man. It's awesome. So that's the plastic watch. That's the Timex Iron Man that we all that we all poo poo on and look past. That's the kind of shit that the time that Timex and in their Iron Man line has been doing since the get go.
Everett Yeah, that's right. Well, and so so it's interesting to me because when you look at 1983 1984 time frame, you know, until like like really 1980 81 82. There are very, very few plastic watches.
Andrew Because people are still just trying to stomach quartz.
Everett That's right. Even, even Casio's at that time are primarily being made out of metal chrome or sometimes steel. Uh, Pulsar, you know, is famously a steel watch, right? So the quartz watches coming out at that time are, are, are steel cased still because watches are coming metal cases, right? That's, that's what everybody knows.
Andrew but it's right. But we're also still in the development period of LCD.
Everett Yes, yes, that's right.
Andrew That's exactly right. So until those two technologies can join forces, we can't see the plastic watches that we see now.
Everett And so we're right there, right? That's happening right now, 1982.
Andrew In 1982, yeah, we're not in 2021. 1983, it's happening. And so it is overnight, I'm gonna snap my fingers
Everett It is overnight. By 1985, there are hundreds of plastic watches on the market. Maybe not hundreds, but really close. And by 1988, 1989, it is tons and tons of watches. I mean, it happens overnight. They have to outnumber steel two to one. And nobody, nobody really pays any attention to it because it's not It's not a thing that history recollects clearly. What we know is in 1982, there weren't any plastic watches, you know, three or four plastic watches in a very short period of time. Later, there's a billion of them.
Andrew Well, cause in, in the early eighties, they were a really specialized functional tool. It was like wearing combat boots. Oh, I get it. That's why you're wearing that. There wasn't this proliferation. There wasn't access to the public of it. Yeah. There wasn't cost effective yet. It wasn't, it wasn't cost prohibitive. It just wasn't available. It wasn't there. And then suddenly they're on scene with affordable LCD with affordable plastic and they're every single department store and grocery store counter for pennies on the dollar of what you're going to pay for any other watch.
Everett That's right. That's right. So Casio and Timex really kick it off and they just start making everything in plastic. And then, and then all these no name companies with ultra cheap, you know, mostly Far East, uh, manufacturing start making disposable impulse buy quartz watches for department store counters. Uh, drugstore counters probably is what you'd call them at the time.
Andrew On the spinners. That's right. I want to be the guy that invented that. The drugstore counter spinner.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He probably didn't get any money.
Andrew No, it's just a tall, lazy Susan.
Everett And really the rest is history, right? Yeah. Cause you can walk into any Walgreens right now today and buy a $7 watch.
Andrew Yeah. And it'll have 10 year battery life and 50 meters water resistance.
Everett Yeah, I mean, possibly. Yeah, that's right.
Andrew That's right. I think part of the success is good digital technology in the way of LCD. A totally infinite number of configurations available. Yes. Molds are cheap and easy to make. Injecting resin or plastic is cheap Easy to accomplish. You can pivot from one design to the next in an afternoon. There isn't the engineering required. There is, but not to the same degree as a fully metal cased watch. Injection molding, right? Yeah.
Everett You can do anything with injection molding.
Andrew And I don't know, there's probably no way to find out when injection molding found its way into this.
Everett Oh, I'm sure there is. I'm sure someone with a much keener sense of the watch industry, you know, if we got Steve Romer back on here, I bet he could tell us all about this. Oh, he could probably tell us the day. You know, we probably should have had him on for this show.
Andrew Well, maybe we can bring him back for plastics round two.
Everett Yeah. Well, and on that note, right, because today plastics range from... So in the late 60s, it was like this plastic. And of course, there were different kinds of plastic and different manufacturers of plastic. we didn't have the diversity of plastics that we have today. You know, now we have everything from very, very pedestrian, inexpensive watches to super, super high tech, crazy, uh, composites. That's right. And you've got, there's carbon fiber for fuck's sake. I mean, like, exactly, exactly. And you've got companies like, you know, Hope companies like Richard Mille and MB&F and Hublot using plastics, plastic case watches. And of course, you know, still simpler utility watches like, like Timex and Casio and even Garmin, right? Or Suunto or I mean, take your pick. That's right. But, but we do have some, you know, it's, it's always developing. I think the most recent development is this, the, the idea of ocean plastics, right?
Andrew Yeah.
Everett Reclaimed plastics from the water where they can make rope and twine and, and watch cases, watch cases. Yeah. And, and watch straps. So tons and tons and tons of plastic watches. We talk about plastic watches on this show all the time without really meaning to talk about plastic watches and y'all talk shit and y'all talk shit. But we, we've got some, we've got some picks for today. We do. We've got some picks for today. And I think we can go through this kind of quickly because, um, you know, we've talked about these or, you know, we, you can talk about these, but I thought there was some cool watches that we found in researching for the show. I'm going to just blast through them real quick. Um, and in no particular order, in no particular order, but I think the first one I want to talk about, and this is maybe my favorite watch we're going to talk about today, a watch I will own at some point. I'm surprised I don't own it yet, but the Tag Heuer Formula One,
Andrew I know why you don't own it yet. It's because it's hard to find the right one.
Everett That is right. That's exactly why you don't own it.
Andrew Because we've talked about this watch for years. This is in, like, in my mind, for you, a great watch. Like if I was going to buy you a watch to get you to leave me the fuck alone, I would buy you a Formula One. And I just be like, great, we can be done.
Everett So that's why I know if I ever like if you ever give me a gift of Formula One, you're quitting the show.
Andrew It's because I'm too rich to do it. Well, they're not terribly expensive is the crazy thing, right? No, but I'm still not gonna buy that for you. I love you a lot, man, but I don't love you that much.
Everett So, you know, these are, you know, sold starting in 1986 and really sold in their plastic, quote unquote, fiberglass iteration until 1994. They're made in three hand configurations, also chronograph. I I think the chronographs are all steel-cased, though, with a plastic bezel.
Andrew I would think so, just because of the technology in there.
Everett And they're cool. I mean, I think it's one of the coolest plastic watches ever made. Great company. I mean, I think it's a great company.
Andrew I don't get why people don't like it.
Everett Yeah, they make some weird watches. So does Richard Mille.
Andrew Well, nobody likes Richard Mille, either. But they spend millions of dollars on it. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I think we poo-poo the shitty things that companies do, if it's a company that we would like to poo-poo. Yeah. we make a lot of sort of pretty expensive quartz watches and I mean some of their designs are and they have a lot of brand ambassador things I I kind of get it but at the same time I don't think that can discount the cool shit that they're doing.
Everett And they went kind of whole hog on their logo in the 80s and 90s. And I mean, that's some tacky stuff.
Andrew Anyway, I just don't think we can discount all the good things they're doing.
Everett I agree. I love Tag Heuer as a brand and I love the plastic case. Heuer Formula Ones. So next thing we talk to next watch, we've already talked about it today, the Fortis Flipper.
Andrew It's super cool. Yeah. Just don't expect to get it in one piece. Right.
Everett A cautionary tale from yours truly. It may be broken, really, really, really broken.
Andrew You got a cool case cover, though. Yeah. I wonder if you could maybe find a case to fit in there.
Everett There's some things you could do. Well, there's some stuff so I can replace the movement. It's a Harley Ronda 375, which is there's a billion of those movements made. I've got a plan with the strap. It comes with a clasp. So it was a plastic band. that has a clasp, like a flip lock. Plastic or steel? It's plastic with steel parts. Weird. Yeah, I'll show it to you. And I'm going to use it. So I've got a plan. I'm going to try to use it. I've got a plan. We'll see what happens.
Andrew That's some Ollie strap shit right there. Just buy a bunch of Ollie straps and find the one that fits.
Everett Yeah, I didn't go with Ollie. I went with another company, but I've got some stuff on the way. I'm going to make something work. America. Next watch.
Andrew The Swatch watch, the System 51.
Everett Yeah, and we went with the System 51 and not just a standard quartz Swatch watch. Because the System 51 is really a very cool watch.
Andrew Yeah. A lot of firsts in the watch world, as we've come to discuss, are really just who put their marketing out claiming that they were first, even if they weren't. So this The System 51 is accepted, truth or not, to be the first fully automated assembly.
Everett On the movement, yeah. Yeah. And I think it's probably accurate.
Andrew No one can say they're lying because who else had the ass at the time to do it? But I'm just saying the Explorer probably wasn't the first watch to summit Everest. So there's some there's some things there, right? There's some there's some Some tinfoil hat shit. Um, it's, it's also like 90 hour power reserve.
Everett No, it's a dope movement. Like, I mean, everything's automated around a single screw.
Andrew Yeah. People are all jacked about 80 hour power reserves. And, and here we're looking at 90.
Everett And these were at least initially, I don't know if still today fully, I mean like actually fully Swiss made.
Andrew Bummer though. Talk to me. They're medically sealed.
Everett Well, it's a bummer and it's a plus. Until it's not. They're made to be completely dust and environmentally sealed. But until it's not. So that's the deal. Right. Yeah. It's broken, it's broken. This watch is going to last you until it stops working.
Andrew And then it's done. And then it's done. Yeah. That's right. That's a bummer. Yeah, maybe a little. Because maybe you're, maybe you're like us and like maybe do irresponsible shit while wearing your watch and well, that was expensive mistake.
Everett So next, a watch I like and I don't think you like as much, but the Shinola Sea Creatures.
Andrew I'm pretty okay with it, but it also, yeah, you know, there it's it.
Everett So this is one of our Ocean Plastics watches. 40 millimeter sport watch with the dive style bezel. Ten atmospheres. They come in cool colors.
Andrew It's cool.
Everett Yeah. Quartz movement. Which tracks? It's a quote-unquote in-house quartz movement.
Andrew Ronda 715. What I dig about these is that they were deliberate about strap matching. Yeah. they're all their colorways come with complimentary straps that are also recycled plastics. And yeah, I'm not, not had a recycled plastic strap, but I have to imagine it's going to be just as comfortable as any nylon or tubular nylon that's out there.
Everett That's my guess as well. Yeah. So I, and they're affordable. I think these are super fun watches.
Andrew Yeah. I mean, they're, they're 450 bucks.
Everett The coolest watch on our list without a shadow of a doubt. Yes. Our friends, Andrew Prez and Rick Cosgrove made the SoLab's Layers watches. These are dope. Or the Layer? Yeah, SoLab's Layer. They're sick. They're sick. They're so great. We've talked about them a ton. Yeah. 38 millimeters.
Andrew How do we not own any?
Everett Miota Quartz. These die-cut, layered dials. I put in our show notes, all caps, DESIGN. You did. Rick Cosgrove is a design guru, if you haven't listened to our episode with Rick and Andrew talking about Rick's design background and everything that went in, that's probably the most laughing we've ever done while recording.
Andrew It's also the only episode that we've done that I fully regret not having video because to see Rick's space, his office behind him, you see it. It's the most personification of a person I've ever seen in a physical space. Yeah, that's right. It was fascinating. And he's like, we're like, oh yeah, take a look at this. And he runs and grabs something. I'm like, where the fuck did that come from? Yeah, check this out. This is fucking awesome.
Everett The cuddling his chair.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just cool dudes doing cool shit. Check them out. And this is my personal favorite on the list. the marathon whole lineup, really. But we've chosen the Navigator today.
Everett Yeah. This is a 46374 revision. Yes. F revision F watch.
Andrew Yes. Still in production. Still carries with it a national stock number. Still can be ordered through the military supply system. If you can find a way. I spent some time trying to find a way. Couldn't make it happen, but it's still possible. High torque etiquettes. It's got tritium tubes.
Everett Some people don't like tritium. I think it's cool. But, but I mean there's some downsides to tritium tubes.
Andrew Yeah. But I think there's, I think they're fucking awesome. A full dial replacement when they die. Yeah. Or, or you just rock without. Or without loom. But that's, that's, that's tritium, right? It's got a half life and it's going to last you 15, 20 years. Ish, yeah. And that's, that's just the reality. But if you're getting 15, 20 years out of an all plastic quartz watch, you should feel pretty good about yourself.
Everett I feel I feel good about myself.
Andrew It comes with or without date in all manner of colors on a nylon pass through not all manners of color.
Everett It comes in three colors.
Andrew It comes in a coyote. All the important colors coyote tan od and black. The fuck else do you need?
Everett Yeah, it's really cool. I do. They make a blue a blue one. I mean, have they ever made a blue one? I think I'd really like a navy navigator.
Andrew I bet there's out there's ones out there.
Everett And you know, there's a there's a bunch of others. We're not going to get to them. Triwa make triva triva triva makes triva makes an ocean plastic watch. There's a company out of Australia called The Horse making an ocean plastics watch. Tom fucking Ford makes an ocean plastics watch. Basically, every Casio made since 1990. Luminox is another great company that's making plastic case watch, etc, etc. So there are plastic watches. Those are just our favorites that we've talked about today. Yeah. Don't buy the Tom Ford one. Or do. Actually, if you own the Tom Ford Ocean Plastics, will you please send it to us so we can take some pictures and review it?
Andrew Yeah. And then you also got other, like, just classics. You've got Seiko plastics that are out there. You've got the Casio World Timer. You've got all these cool options that were born of this bastardization of the watch world and then said, you know what, watch world, fuck you and took it over. Everyone owns a plastic watch now.
Everett Uh, I own, I own lots of plastic watches. I own one more as of this week.
Andrew It doesn't work. Will might not own a plastic watch. Yeah, maybe not.
Everett I will say this plastic watch that I bought that doesn't work and doesn't have a strap, I've worn it two full days since I got it, and I love it.
Andrew And when you say it doesn't work, he means the second hand is not even moving. It literally does not work at all. It says it's 25th, which isn't that far off.
Everett Have you been setting the date? No, it has been 844 on the 25th since I got it.
Andrew You know something, I think a cool touch when you order a watch is when they take the time to set it to your time zone. That is cool. When I got my watch from, um, when I got the Al's penis from no man, I, it came set to with daylight saving time accounted for set to my time.
Everett It was still, it was still running. I was a charge at when they packed, they shipped it.
Andrew Yeah, that's crazy. I've had a little bit of movement issues with it. And I think I, I think as a function of the things that I've done while wearing it, um, just, it's a little bit, more plus or minus than I'd expect.
Everett Use your tools, man. Use your tools. Andrew, anything else about plastic watches you want to add today?
Andrew No, I think that's it. I think we've covered the, you know, the broad stroke of plastic watches and how we got to a greatness.
Everett Yeah, look, so we listed a lot of names and dates, and if we missed anything, let us know because we are genuinely curious about this issue, or at least I am genuinely curious about this issue. Let us know. Also, if you're an expert on plastics watches, I think you're the only one in the world. Please contact us and we'll do something with you. Probably get an honorary PhD from Yale. Andrew, other things. What do you got?
Andrew My other thing has got to be boats. That's been what's consumed me for the last several weeks. Because about a month ago, my wife and I were just looking at a boat while we're sitting on the beach. She's like, let's get a boat.
Everett That's amazing. Like, what? She's like, yeah, we should get a boat.
Andrew It's like, really? So, you all know how I research things and how I look for things. Yes, yes, yes, I know. And I kind of settled on my style on the general, not precisely what I was looking for, because it's impossible in the used world, especially of of vehicles to find exactly what you're looking for. Often, yeah. So I narrowed it down to specs. Went out and, you know, obviously, like we talked about earlier, got on one day, and when I got home, we were talking about, we were trying to talk ourselves out of it. And what we came down to in reasons to not weren't reasons to not. And this is more of like a for people on the fence of doing fun shit. You can almost always afford it. If you want. Yeah. And you can always make time for it. And that was kind of the two things we were coming down to. Right. Can we afford it? Can we make time for it? And that's precisely that. Yes, we can afford it. There are a lot of other discretionary expenses that we could cut out of our world. And we can also just make time. No one ever finds time to do things because that just means I don't want to fucking do it. And I wasn't so bored that I couldn't bring myself to do it. So. Then we're like, oh, do we really want to spend the money? And we came to the to the conclusion that if we sell this boat in a year at a loss, even if it's a total loss, even if we lose, say, $6,000, did we have more fun than going to Disneyland for a week? And I think the answer will be yes. If we get out on the water a dozen times, that's the cost of admission. We paid for it. And we're kind of in this mindset with it that we're not gonna let the upfront cost Obviously, there's some things that the upfront cost is totally prohibitive, right? I'm not going to be on a commercial flight to space, however much I'd like to.
Everett But balancing that cost of admission, if... Did you read the same number I did, $26 million per minute? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Yeah.
Andrew They got a free speedy out of it. So, you know, there's that. But yeah, that was our final, our decision making factor was, Are we going to have this many dollars worth of fun? And how do we compare it? Because we've been talking about going to Disneyland or Disney World, and effectively, for a one-week trip, that's exactly the same amount of money. Yeah. Will I have more fun with this with a year? Assuming it only lasts a year, and I fuck it up and ruin it in a year, than I would in a week at Disneyland or Disney World. And that was kind of our threshold. Like, how much fun am I willing to pay for?
Everett And really, that was our decision. Your worst case scenario is unrealistic. Your worst case scenario is actually you keep it for two years, you spend, you know, a thousand dollars on storage and sell it at a thousand dollar loss. And it's a two thousand dollar mistake as opposed to a sixty five hundred dollar mistake.
Andrew Worst case scenario is I sink it.
Everett Right. Well, but it's going to be insured, I assume. Yeah. Insurance is cheap. Yeah.
Andrew Yeah. Really cheap. I looked it up and I was like twelve dollars a month. Dope. Is that even insurance? Yeah, covers it. Yeah, that was our that was our threshold. Am I going to have this many dollars worth of fun? And the answer is yes, because all summer we're going to be on the lake and make time to be on the lake, force us to be together as a family, however miserable that is. Fish in the winters. It's going to be dope. Yeah. And I'm going to have more fun doing this than I will going to Disneyland. I like it, man. I'm into it. So just as a like as my other thing being just bringing fun things into perspective against other fun things that you are more inclined to do.
Everett Justifying your purchases.
Andrew Yeah. I've got another thing. I told Sam though that I would like an Explorer $7,000 worth and she was like, no, no. I was like, I'd wear it every day for weeks, months, years at a time. No. All right.
Everett Her loss. I've got another thing. Do me. So, um, I am Actually right now in the process of buying a boat. I'm not buying it, but a good friend of mine is and so I'm going to have a boat at your disposal and none of the expenses.
Andrew That's the way to buy a boat.
Everett It's going to be. It's going to be a bay liner. It's, you know, 17 footer, 120 horsepower, and it's I'm really excited about it. So that's my other thing.
Andrew You're going to troll for so many salmon.
Everett So I have another thing, Andrew. It is not a boat. I have recently. Well, well, actually, my daughter. uh, my nine year old daughter has recently blasted through the Harry Potter series books and movies books. And I read these books, I read them many, many years ago. Uh, gosh man, probably on release. Yeah. 15 years ago. Yeah. A long ass fucking time ago. Um,
Andrew Did you feel weird when the last one came out? I remember being in high school when the last one came out and feeling too old to be reading it, but I also required resolution.
Everett Yeah, you know, I don't know that I did feel that way, but I've always been pretty okay with YA books. But yeah, so here I am. Betty's reading these books and I bought them. I bought paperback versions, a box set of these because I wanted her to be able to read them.
Andrew Paperback?
Everett Uh, yeah. Have you, I mean, that book, like book five is like a billion pages. Trying to read that thing on hardback, not going to happen. I had them all on hardback. You'd need to have like a stand.
Andrew Yeah. Well, it's an exercise. Yeah, it is.
Everett It is a thousand pages. That is nine. So, um, bought paperbacks and it's a neat box set. It's like a English, uh, edition. It's like the adult, anyway, whatever. Leather bound? That doesn't matter. But, uh, bought these and so I was like, well, shit, I'll just read them behind her. And so that's what I've been doing is she finishes the book.
Andrew I started, I thought you meant like over her shoulder. No, that's a weird thing to do.
Everett No, no. Uh, and I'm just loving the shit out of it, man. So, so good. Yes. So fun. Um, like I said, I read them before and I ate them up the first time. So I knew they were good, but here I am, you know, 15 years later, maybe reading them again and just, enjoying the heck out of them. Um, you know, I think something I probably realized at the time, but didn't really put, uh, uh, words to was the phenomenon of the injustice, right? The injustice in these books is very discreet. I would say sort of in the style of rolled doll where all of the grownups are unreasonable, Um, don't listen to the kids. The kids are clearly smart and the grownups are not willing to tell them anything, not willing to let them in on anything. Um, completely unfair at every turn. Um, you know, and also good and bad, right? The good people are just very, very good. And the bad people are just clearly discreetly bad until they're not there. These, well, yeah. Um, you know there are these there are these sort of silly irrational character tropes and that's bothered me a little bit more i think than it did the first time with that said total pleasurable experience i've just i'm halfway through book six now there's nine right uh seven of the original series okay it's the seven years of of school but yeah seven books so i'm i'm halfway through the penultimate book and Betty is halfway through the seventh book. So it's working out perfectly. Did read them all.
Andrew I don't know that I've seen all the movies.
Everett Uh, I have definitely not seen all the movies.
Andrew That's the next project is to binge the movies. That's right. We'll sit down when we're all done and watch. I remember, I remember, I feel like the first one was very much like Game of Thrones season one, like just a point for point from the book. And then everything else took artistic license. That was, as I recall, from, you know, a very long time ago, having read Harry Potter and watched, you know, I think that might be right.
Everett And I think that's probably a product of all of the movies are 90 minute movies and the books are all they just get longer and longer and longer. Well, I was happy to see the book six was a little shorter than five. Book five was very big and books and it made my wrists hurt.
Andrew yeah when i was reading i have a friend who uh as a tick while reading the pages super annoying both sides constantly just can't stop i cannot imagine uh watching her read the fifth book that's right there would be a lot of that it would be a long flip yeah that would be miserable andrew anything else you want to add i'm out of things man you you're you're all out of things all out
Everett Well, I'm out of things to do, so thank you for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20, the Watch Clicker podcast. Check us out on Instagram at 40 in 20 or at the Watch Clicker. We post pictures there sometimes. You can check out the website, watchclicker.com. We post reviews and articles and other cool things there. It's a good place to be. You should go. If you want to support 40 in 20 or the Watch Clicker, you can do so at patreon.com slash 40 and 20. That is patreon.com. I think I said that a little, a little mushy.
Andrew Yeah.
Everett Patreon.com slash 40 and 20. Look guys, that's where we get all the support for the show, hosting, hardware, et cetera, as well as Andrew's ever growing t-shirt collection. All vintage. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Bye bye. Oh,