The crew over at Undone are no strangers to working characters from the comic strips into their watches. While you might think of a cheerful rodent from Florida when it comes to a character watch, why not something a bit more, shall we say, human? Starting today, there’s a super-limited edition that you can get a special invite to purchase – the Undone x Popeye & Friends.
To be fair, this new trio starts from a base of existing watches in the Undone catalog, with some unique touches to it. For good ol’ Popeye, they’ve gone with a Destro case (aka, the crown is on the left) variant of their Marine Nationale snowflake. Sure, you don’t see the snowflake handsets (instead you got Popeye’s bulging forearms), but you do have the snowflake-style indices. Fittingly for the sailor man, the bezel here is made of bronze, which will of course patinate quite nicely.
Of course, if you have Popeye, that means his best girl Olive Oyl can’t be far away, right? Of these three character watches, using Olive Oyl’s hands makes the most sense in terms of a handset, as it seems (at least, in my memory) that she was always windmilling her arms around. This watch is in a more diminutive size (34mm vs the 40mm of the Popeye), and has a lovely mother-of-pearl dial set into the rose gold-tone stainless steel case. given the smaller case size, it should be no surprise we’ve got a quartz movement here.
Last, but certainly not least, we have Brutus. Sure, everyone wants to be the good guy, but hey, Brutus is just doing what he thinks is right, no? Regardless, he’s part of this cartoonish love triangle, and I really find this case design to be the most interesting of the three. The 43mm stainless steel case has a blue PVD coating, a smoked crystal in the dial showing the movement, and an awesome pop of color via the red crown (something that’s exclusive to this box set).
Now, that does bear mentioning – the Undone x Popeye & Friends is indeed a box set, and there are some special touches that come on these watches. As mentioned, the Brutus has that red crown, Popeye has the bronze bezel, and Olive Oyl has a gem set into the crown, as well as the rose gold finish. In other words – even if these watches are found individually at some point, you won’t see those touches on the stand-alone pieces.
The Undone x Popeye & Friends boxset also comes with packaging covered with art from the comic strip, and a serialized framed artwork that features this trio of rapscallions. Given all the touches and extras, it won’t be a surprise to learn that only 50 of these boxsets will be offered at a price of $1,499. Now, as a loyal reader, we’ve actually got five of those invites that we can hand out to you, dear reader. How do you do that? Go to this link and put your name and email in. We’ve got 5 set aside for WWR readers, and you can enter between March 10th and 15th – after that, there will be a random draw and you’ll be notified if you’re selected. Good luck! undone.com
Tech Specs from Undone
Destro Popeye
- Case: bronze; 40mm; 48mm lug-to-lug; 15mm case height
- Crystal: double-domed, Lexan
- WR: 100m
- Movement: Seiko NH35A automatic
Aqua Brutus
- Case: PVD-coated stainless steel; 43mm; 16.5mm (incl crystal)
- Crystal: sapphire
- WR: 200m
- Movement: Seiko NH35A automatic
Olive
- Case: stainless steel with rose gold finish; 34mm; 11mm thick
- Crystal: hardened, domed K1
- WR: 30m
- Movement: Seiko TMI VH61 Quartz movement with sweep seconds
