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It's time for Sonic!
With Sonic the Hedgehog themed watches of the USA. There were so many watches, that they had to get their own page away from accessories to keep them sorted. The watch page can have both vintage and new time pieces. But, if it goes on your wrist & is Sonic themed, you can see it here. (And if you don't...you can send in photos) |
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Sonic Gear Main Merchandise Page * Sonic Watches Page 1 * Sonic Watches USA 3 * |
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Here's another (well deserved) look at the uncommon Swatch Watch with Sonic Adventure theme. The watch itself, and it's trasparent plastic 'box/tube' thing already appear on Gear accessories, but what didn't appear is the special feature!
The watch face has a normally (from straight on) invisible hologram effect in it! When turning the face / tilting it in the light a Sonic face appears in shimmering hologram color. This is hard to photograph, but they've sort of caught it in 3 phases there at the bottom.
Why wasn't this known before? The package didn't describe it as a feature, the watch itself is uncommon, it started off expensive so nobody much got it, and you probably have to debox it to really access/notice the feature.
Still, this is cool to know about and to see. It makes the watch even more desirable as a collectible. |
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Here are 2 different watches that can be found at Wal Mart, likely starting around new-years 2014. They began appearing in the little 'gift bag' you see here, with a red bow on the handle. The bag has |
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Sonic & Tails, with a window/hole so you can see the plastic case for the watch inside. The watches appear to be in some sort of plastic clamshell. These are really the inexpensive-type of watch. The digital display is that really tiny rectangle (you can hardly see it) at the bottom of each design there. They were only about 5.00 when found. The band is plastic, with plastic buckle too. One has just jumping modern Sonic, the other has Sonic & facing away Shadow. The one with the red band only came in that little bag. Distribution on these watches was likely not that great, people had trouble spotting them until well after the initial release. Left 2 photos by Solar Sonic. |
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This Sonic watch is new in 2014. It has a flip-over 'lid' or face guard. The top is that flat, layered cut rubber that holds detail well. (Several popular keychains are made of it) It has thumbs-up modern Sonic in a blue & white circle. The band has rings & stars. The 'face' has 3 more rings...but the tiny, super cheap rectangle LCD time display sort of cheapens the feel of the whole thing. By not giving it a real 'face' it makes the disk seem unnecisary. Then, look how it flips off to one side. How do you flip it while your wrist is still in there? |
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Is it...time for a blast from the past with this actual classic watch? Yes, as it has a great Sonic & Knuckles theme. |
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| This watch likely appeared soon after S&K , but where was it sold? It has the Sonic & Knuckles symbol all over the band, plus a few rings. The logo is printed on the edge, and it has cool details inside. One of the hands has a loop on it to look like a ring. There's also a clear plastic 'dial' inside with standing Knuckles & running Sonic art. This likely turns as the watch counts seconds so that they appear to 'chase' around the watch face. It has the Sega copyright etched into the metal back, & it's from 1994. For an older watch, this has a lot of good detail & seems fun. Photo discovered by: Art A. |
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This is a flip-open digital watch by Innovative Time. It has a sort of fat looking classic Sonic in the center of one of the checkered loops from Sonic 1. The packaging is interesting, with purple electroplate logo, clear plastic dome & running wrap-around Sonic art. Look at the original price: 3.76 . That's inexpensive, even for the time. The watch has a time & calendar function. It was made in 1995. This is interesting to see still in the package. |
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At the time of Sonic Adventure 1, a company called "E Watch Factory" decided to do some SA1 themed watches. You could supposedly mix & match the band colors, numbering style & character who you wanted, so you could compose, and then order your own special watch design, and they'd send it to you. |
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| Does that whole "mix n match any character" theme sound familiar? It should! It's directly from the "Avoiding Bootlegs" section of the site. What's the difference? Quality...most likely. E Watch Factory was a licensed company, they were just using a common/familiar bootleger's technique to create their products. (Really, the 'faces' are just special print outs...) |
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| The idea was sound, it's just fakers have sort of turned it to trash in the meantime. You can see they really went all out with the details. You could get Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, Eggman, E102 Gamma, Chao & Big. The numbers could be |
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| regular, triangles (no numbers) lines, seconds (to 60, increments at either 20 or 5) or tiny numbers (Rouge's) Likely the E & Eggman watches are least common...however all of them are pretty rare anyway. The campaign was only somewhat-promoted, and it's thought they were also a bit costly. All photos by SonicTeam. |
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This is a 'custom' Amy Rose watch. When Sonic Adventure 1 first arrived on the scene, Sega celebrated by releasing watches you could customize via option selection on a website. YOU got to choose the character art, background color, number color, and likely the hands as well. Once you were done customizing, you could see a photo of the watch, and if you liked it, order it for $20.00.
Notice the "Sonic" logo and Sega copyright on the bezel! There are tons of fake watches out there using similar stock art. Most fakers cannot copy frosting on metal or metal cut-ins such as these. ALSO notice that no part of the art is cut off, and numbers are not printed on |
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| the character's face or body parts. Fakers do not care about the final quality of an item, they'll just scrawl all over stock art if it doesn't fit, or slice pieces off to get it to fit in the watch. Always look for Sega copyrights, fake watches are VERY tricky! (and very worthless) Photo discovered by & info provided by: SonicToast |
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This is an interesting item. Supposedly from America..but look at the watch face. It has VERY Japan-like renditions of Eggman, Flicky Bird and the bunny as line-art in the background. You can find these on Ebay currently, and they're nearly always out of the USA, which is odd due to the art style. There is an almost identical, or exactly identical one that was sold in the UK as well. It can be seen on UK Accessories. |
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Swatch City did a Sonic Adventure 1 promotion with this really expensive watch. Why did it cost so much? It came with a plastic door sign thing. Is the watch measuring in Beat Time*? Like on Phantasy Star Online? Was this what kicked off the unique time measurement system? The instruction manual would say...
*Beat Time was invented for PSO, which was an international game with an in-game translation helper system so people from everywhere could communicate at least enough to have fun and play. Nothing like it had been invented before (or used since...too bad)
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| but to go with it, they created Beat Time, where every 24 hour day is divided into 1000 beats. This was so that everyone on earth could use the SAME time system and not have to account for time zone confusion. So like, 798 in the afternoon for you, would be evening for someone else. As long as everyone knew WHEN their beats were meet ups could be coordinated. It was actually pretty interesting and a good idea that also seemed to vanish. |
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Giveaway by Quaker Oats Digital Watch. It definately looks like a freebie item, despite the highly detailed band ...what is that floating red & white junk? Is it like Oat pieces or something? And what's Sonic doing running around in it? I guess if you got it for free though...
No one has yet provided a close enough photo to tell what's going on exactly with the design here. |
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Set of 3 watches produced around the time of Sonic and Knuckles & Sonic 2. These are believed to have been mail order-available, at the time, through some offer, possibly in a magazine or maybe a Sega catalog. They have metal frames, and supposedly the back bezel is marked SEGA in etching. The first has the S&K symbol, next is Sonic standing next to Tails and the last one is a Sonic face with the classic logo. The last one's band has the Sega logo on it as well.
Isn't this photo really small. It's also very old. |
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Here's a better look at the 3rd watch from the photo above. It's the Sonic 2 watch, produced for the release. It came in a long box (seen in the middle) and this reveals that it has red stars where the numbers would be, a likely glow in the dark accent for all 3 of the hands (arrow, dot, and line). |
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Sonic Adventure 1 watch. It is official. Though it is plain, it has an engraved back from ewatchfactory.com. The engraving has the Sega/Sonic logo, copyrights & 2 lines of text (custom) It was a ltd. offer for the release of Sonic Adventure 2 & retailed for $25. You could choose from any of the SA2 main characters, plus a chao & band color.
Yes, it's the same EWatch Factory from above on this page, but this shows they also had either 2 rounds of releases, or selectable art that wasn't shown the first time. The hands placement on this one isn't very good though...they're in his mouth! Info by Blue Sonikku |
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A classic analog watch. Using a JP stock art, this was one of the first Sonic watches.Not much is known about it. You can see it also has art on the band. |
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| Is it really 'time to be cool' with this flip top face watch? The raised plastic design on the 'lid' was an easy way to dress up a simple digital face and get relativly large art onto an item. This has classic Sonic on the standard checkered background on the flip top, with a somewhat poor Tails stock art and raving Robotnik on the band. The back of the package shows that this was one of 3 watches released at the same time from Kids Club. The speech bubble in the center says 'collect them all'. All photos & info courtesy of Barry & Sega Memories |
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