While Zodiac may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I’ve become fond of their vaguely retro GMT models and the brightly color models, particularly on their comfortable 5-link bracelets. However, with this latest release, I may have to bump their “Skin” (short for skindiver, one presumes) to the top of my personal list.
On one hand, I tend to rail against watches that do something to make it “seem” more feminine. On the other hand, offering up a pink dial doesn’t really fall under that umbrella, as it’s just another color that many folks have as a favorite. Add in that it’s a watch helping raise funds for breast cancer research, and we’re all on board with the Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon Hope.
While it’s not unusual for a watch brand to release a new tweak to an existing model, it’s less common for them to release that tweak and make it a limited edition. That’s precisely what Sjöö Sandström does with their Annual Edition watch, something that started up back in 2018 (to be precise, the Annual Edition naming started in 2019). While those editions had the major changes in the form of the dial color, the Sjöö Sandström Royal Steel Classic Annual Edition 21 goes mining our childhoods for inspiration.
As we’ve mentioned, it’s hard – especially now – for a watch that hits Kickstarter to stand out. Many are just average, and many more are just plain bad examples kit-bashed, badge-engineered “designs” that were slapped together from a catalog. Then you have something like the Jord Foundry, which really does stand out from the crowd.
EXT. ALIEN CASINO
RICK: Put that away, Morty.
MORTY: But shouldn’t we –
RICK: Absolutely not, Morty. Trust me, they wouldn’t know what to do with your –
(Pulls down sunglasses)
– what is that? A G-SHOCK?
It would seem that this recycled ocean plastic has created quite a boon for creating different things. I mean, there’s a lot of it out in the oceans, so getting it out and reusing it (so we’re not creating even more plastic) sounds like a good thing to us. It’s also allowing brands to expand out into other uses. We’ve of course seen watch brands making use of the material, but now we’ve got an eyeglass company jumping into it, with the Sea2see Seal.
Over the past year or so, we’ve covered a number of Time for Action watches from Triwa, with many of the more recent ones featuring cases made of recycled ocean plastic. Fittingly, for the material, their latest collaboration is the Triwa x Sea Shepherd.
We’ve long been fans of what New Zealand brand Magrette has been producing, and their Leoncino (we wrote about the prior version here). That design was popular, but we’ve not seen it kicking around for a bit. Well, until now, because the Magrette Leoncino is back, in a new 40mm case design.
As you well know, we tend to focus on watches that fall into the affordable end of the spectrum, and primarily well under $1000 price tags. Still, every now and again, something pops up that’s just too cool not to talk about, even though it’s a good deal more expensive than our normal coverage. One of the latest to hit that mark is the Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Huracán White.
Timex is no doubt a brand you’re familiar with. We’ve written about them quite a bit, and we’ve all no doubt owned at least one or two at some point. The James Brand on the other hand may be new to you, unless you’re watching the world of well-designed every day carry (aka, EDC) items. Well, now they’re breaking through to more folks, and introducing a new watch, the The James Brand x Timex Expedition North.
