That Nagging Feeling

As parents, we frequently find ourselves telling our kids “No” A LOT and a good chunk of those “No’s” are delivered with no real reason behind it besides, “I said No”. We can’t articulate why the answer is no, we just know it is.

For me, some watch purchase decisions are in this category. On the face, there’s no real reason I shouldn’t buy the watch that’s my obsession du jour. I can afford it, it covers at least two criterion I’m looking for in a watch, I haven’t made the wife mad recently… But… (there’s always a but, right?) most of the time, I just don’t buy the watch. Sometimes, I don’t even realize WHY the answer is “No”, I just know it is.

When the MoonSwatch was first announced I initially wanted a Mission to the Moon or a Mission to Mars… for about a week. I hesitated and listened to that soft “No” that made me not travel 12 round trip hours by car to ultimately end up disappointed when finding out the queue was already longer than the availability and online wasn’t a channel Swatch was going to allow for them.

I was a newly minted watch obsessive and had zeroed in on an Omega Speedmaster as a potential Grail piece, so I was trying to navigate the firehose of watch information available about it and found out about the in-store-only release of the MoonSwatch about 12-18 hours before the closest store would be opening. I thought, “Hey, it’s a 1:1 copy on the size. This would be a good way to see if the watch fits me.” But, something said “No”. Listening to the un-reasoned “No”, saved me 12 hours of driving and possibly stopped me from inciting a riot, because I would have been HOT at not being able to buy one after driving all that way. That parenting “No” has also stopped me from being a party to a couple of things I generally don’t like contributing to if I can help it.

An Environmental Disaster

As the hype died down, I realized what the MoonSwatch is and what it isn’t. It’s a plastic (call it whatever fancy ass name you want Swatch, but it’s still just plastic) copy of a famous watch with a movement that cannot be repaired. It’s a watch destined to become landfill, no matter how well taken care of. It’s a plastic toy watch that costs as much as other watches with stainless steel cases & serviceable movements (or at least interchangeable ones). The original strap at the very least needed to be turned around, if not replaced outright. Because there are now approximately 20 different versions, some collectors feel it necessary to treat them like Pokemon or MTG cards & collect them all, increasing the mass of eventual non-biodegradable landfill.

A Disaster For Enthusiasts

The MoonSwatch is possibly also one of the first salvos in the next stage of the continual battle between big business & consumers and maybe a small part of where my “I am saying no, but I’m not sure why.” reluctance stemmed from. This business vs. consumer battle is where big business tries their very best to give us consumers the least value for the most money they can get away with and we do a piss-poor job of getting the most value for the least money we can, because FOMO.

Seiko has been doing it for years by not upgrading their watches to sapphire crystals while microbrands using the Seiko ebauche movements have used sapphire in their watches. Hamilton has been not giving us anti-reflective coating on a field watch. A field watch with military history, where if worn by a soldier, a reflection of light at the wrong time might give away the position of a patrol or a sniper. Yes, soldiers now typically use a G-Shock, Suunto or a Garmin, but this brand trades on its military heritage. Seiko not having sapphire crystals & Hamilton not coating their crystals are simply examples of cost cutting measures only designed to fatten the coffers of the business, knowing most buyers would give them a pass since Seiko had been known for so long as the value king & Hamilton had the least expensive Swiss field watch. By and large, consumers HAVE given them a pass and are about to give them another.

The reason you should maybe listen to that “No” in the back of your mind & think twice (or 20 more times) about buying a MoonSwatch is this. As a customer base, with all the units Swatch has moved of the MoonSwatch & the Scuba Fifty Fathoms, we just told Swatch (and now Bulova) that we are A-OK buying plastic watches. Not just OK, but HAPPY to queue up to simply have a chance to buy one. The millions of data points us consumers have given them makes it almost a certainty that Swatch (and other brands) are going to keep making millions upon millions of non-biodegradable watches that can’t be serviced and selling them to us and we will keep buying them, because FOMO.

The existence & success of watches like the MoonSwatch, the Scuba Fifty Fathoms & the Bulova Snorkel are as much a threat to actual heirloom watches like the Speedy as quartz was back in the 70’s and 80’s & cell phones, computers & wrist computers are now, only now the majority of the industrialized world is already not wearing a traditional watch. 

Sure, watch brands like Rolex, Patek and a few others are likely not going anywhere and will still be making the same watches they’ve always made; in stainless steel, gold, etc. As much as I hated the way Thierry Stern said that Patek isn’t a watch for the ordinary person, he was right, and that’s fine. The richest people will still buy whatever watches they want and those people usually want a watch only they can buy; actual taste or style be damned. They want exclusivity over style anyway. Patek & those similar brands deliver that. However, watch brands at the lower end of the spectrum like Mido, Longines, Squale, Ball, Christopher Ward, maybe even Omega, might be in danger of either going under or selling plastic watches in an effort to remain afloat. People that typically buy watches in the under $1000 range have budgets and restrictions. They buy a couple of MoonSwatches because they are “fun” & FOMO tells them they should and maybe now they can’t buy that Lorier or that Farer or even that Mido or Longines they had their eye on for another 1-2 years. But with price hikes & wage stagnation (suppression?) & inflation on necessities maybe they never end up buying that better watch that just kept moving further away? Enough people do that and suddenly a beloved microbrand has to shut down, then another and another. Next an indie brand or a lower tier brand. Suddenly, options for the watches enthusiasts love because they offer better specs than the heavyweights are reduced. All because the world can’t say no to ‘fun” or faked FOMO.

I hope this is the last time I write about the (IMO) accursed MoonSwatch, but it probably won’t be. I have strong feelings about it and writers write about what we have strong feelings for.

If you have purchased a bioceramic watch, I still love you as a person; and to bring this back to the opening parenting motif…