Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
-
Orient Pierrot Game watch
You’ll never see a game watch with the Seiko name on it — but that’s not to say they never made one, just not under the Seiko brand. They did, however, make a surprisingly large number of game watches, under their Alba and Orient brands. One of these was the Pierrot (clown) Game watch which…
-
Sanyo World Time calculator watch
Sanyo is one of my favourite digital watch companies of the 1980s – they put some great technology into a budget plastic case and banged out thousands of them for a waiting public. The World Time calculator watch was a Hong Kong special – the circuitboard is labelled C135 – and came out with several…
-
Casio Christmas Collection 1980
This was a great find – although I found it on a local auction website, rather than in the wild. Catalogues are generally printed on lower-quality stock, and are repurposed, burned or binned shortly after being flicked through. So that’s what makes this catalogue amazing – from 1980, the Casio Christmas Collection, preserved in pretty…
-
Winnie the Pooh
From the earliest windup Mickey Mouse watch, Disney have made a tonne of timepieces and sold them to tourists visiting their theme parks and themed stores around the world. Surprisingly, though, very few of them have been game watches and this, the Winnie the Pooh game watch, might be the only one. That’s not to…
-
Casio IA-1000
Casio’s IA-1000 is about the most unassuming calculator/databank/multi-alarm watch ever! On the surface, it looks like a stylish analog dress watch, with gold plate and a leather strap. The only giveaway that things are not quite what they seem are the words ‘databank’ below Casio, and Flip Top near the bottom of the dial. And…
-
Cat & Mouse
I’ve seen a few (not many but enough that it isn’t an ultra-rare watch) Juggler watches but had always believed it to be a one-off kind of thing. Picture me surprised then, when a very familiar-looking watch appeared in a bundle of old dead watches on a local auction site. Cue some more investigation and…
-
Nelsonic Soccer
Nelsonic made a stack of great game watches in the 1980s — some which you see quite often like Pacman, others you rarely ever see like Simon. Then there is Soccer. This watch had a number of other manufacturer names on it (like Welde) and had a cheaper feel to it than the Pacman/Frogger/Q*Bert watches.…
-
Alba Y829 Voice & Game
Alba’s Y829 watch is a JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) game watch with limited or no international release. I say that with some confidence having never seen one with English text on the face, nor one with a different speaking voice other than Japanese. And with that, and having no instructions available anywhere for it; it’s…
-
Casio AN-9
One of Casio’s simplest, and most elegant, watches is the AN-9. It does one thing, and one thing only. Tells the time with an analog display. There isn’t even a backlight. You can choose between two types of display — the one you can see in the photo with the seconds around the outside, and…
-
Citizen 8950
Citizen’s feature-packed analog-digital 8950 is probably the model that has the most varieties (much like Seiko’s H357 or Casio’s AQ-230 ranges – designed at a time when a analog-digital hybrid watch was the way of the future). And there is plenty to like about this too – you get the time in 12/24 format, day/date/month,…
-
Citizen 8981 Ana-Digi-Temp
Citizen must have known they were on to a winner with the Ana-Digi-Temp watch, since they made a variety of flavours of it – including the 8980, 8982, 8984, 8986 and 8988 – along with this version, the 8981. Sharing much in common with the 8980, including the temperature sensor on the front glass rather…
-
Windert Micro Game (Monte Carlo)
The Unitrex Monte Carlo game watch is credited with being the first LCD game watch and dates back to 1977. It came in two different case designs and in gold or silver. And that was that. Until I found this – the Windert Micro Game watch. Few people know much about the Monte Carlo watch,…
-
Orient Sound Monitor 771105-40
Today Orient is a sub-brand of Seiko, along with Pulsar and Alba (and probably others). But in the 1970s and 1980s Orient was a force all of its own and came up with some amazing watches during this time. They were making LCD watches as early as 1976 (some say 1974) and one thing that…
-
Trafalgar digital hands watch
Trafalgar was a prolific watch company in the 1980s and had plenty of Hong Kong modules with their name on the front. They were a UK company as far as I can tell (the Trafalgar name is a bit of a giveaway) and many of their vintage watches can also be seen with Nelsonic (USA)…
-
Sinitron Burger Time game watch
Post number 200 on this website and it’s a bit of a special one — the Sinitron Burger Time! First time I saw this watch was about 10 years ago, with the brand name Diamant, and owned by a collector in Canada. Since then I’ve looked thoroughly (just a little short of obsessively) and midway…
-
Kessel 7-Melody Calculator Watch
This super full-featured calculator watch I had dismissed as being a dud – since the only melody I could get out of it was Yellow Rose of Texas, and then only sometimes. Which is one of the pitfalls of collecting rare and sometimes obscure watches – there’s rarely ever a manual, or even someone else…
-
Omni Dick Tracy Magnetic Space Musical Alarm
Omni’s Dick Tracy watch is the *almost* identical twin to the Bradley Star Wars Musical watch. They are both as rare as each other (although the Star Wars watch is more highly sought-after due to the enormous Star Wars fanbase) and have plenty in common. Both have animated LCDs, both have a main character on…
-
Bradley Star Wars musical watch
So many things about Star Wars are iconic, but among the best parts of the saga/series is the theme. And when this watch was released in 1982 it was sure to be a good seller since it included a long version of the theme as it’s musical alarm. It lasts about a minute which is…
-
Grafix Cyberwear Numeral watch
For a short time, in the mid to late 1990s, a husband and wife company who designed LCD timepieces for trendy giftshops, were suddenly thrust into the spotlight when a costume designer for Star Trek: The Next Generation happened upon one of these pieces and made it part of Worf the Klingon’s character’s outfit. Since…
-
Sinitron Space Raider game watch
The Space Raider game watch is a rarity; when it is seen, it’s usually the CompuChron watch, which I used to own and regretted ever selling it. There are two (at least) different game watches labelled as Space Raider – this one, and the one better known as Space Defender, which was branded as Space…
Got any book recommendations?