Today is the Day of the Dead. Long before Disney’s CoCo hit the silver screen, watchmakers have exploited celebrated the holiday with brightly colored sugar skull watches (as opposed to biker-oriented plain skull watches). Here are four prime examples . . .
Hublot Big Bang Broderie Sugar Skull – $14,819
There’s a metric ton of really cheap quartz-powered sugar skull watches for sale at the usual suspects (Amazon, Zazzle). For some reason, many of them are labeled women’s watches. Are you man enough to wear Hublot’s Big Bang Broderie?
Launched in 2015, the embroidered dial watch is a full 41mm, powered by Hublot’s in-house HUB1110 mechanical self-winding movement (base Sellita SW300) with a 42-hour power reserve.
More importantly, Israeli model Bar Rafeali loves it! OK she was paid to love it, and since the photo shoot she married a billionaire. Had a kid too. Where was I? Oh right . . .
Hublot’s ceramic-cased sugar skull watch makes its face with Lurex threads in turquoise, navy blue, pale pink, fuchsia, yellow, orange and violet, woven into a silk-lined dial. A psychedelic sixties take on the sugar skull watch that’s found favor on chrono24.com.
If you think about, what better watch to mark the Day of the Dead? Who doesn’t want to go out with a Bang?
Mr. Jones Last Laugh Tattoo – $275
We’re a big fan of Mr. Jones’ inventive watches. Their A Perfectly Useless Afternoon watch is a firm favorite. British tattoo artist Adrian Willard designed this latest version of The Last Laugh.
It poses no challenge to our resident watch dial decipherer Oscar Klosoff. The top teeth offer jumping hours, the bottom sliding minutes. To make the watch that bit freakier, the eyes rotate, like this . . .
This one runs off the robot-made automatic ST1721. It’s available in 31mm and 37mm. Maggots not included.
Like all sugar skull watches, the Last Laugh Tattoo doubles as a memento mori – a reminder of death to make you more grateful for life. So this watch is appropriate wristwear for the other 364.24 days per year. Theoretically.
Check this out: the exact same watch face is available as a download for your smart watch. Speaking of which . . .
Facer Sugar Skulls – Free-ish
The advantage of this face: it’s on-demand. Like all smartwatch faces, you can turn it off when you don’t want your mother to think you’re as weird as she thinks you are.
Also true: you can use the Facer app to create your own sugar skull smartwatch face. I’m not sure of the copyright situation re: scanning someone else’s handiwork, but I think the feds are pretty busy intercepting fake watches.
Timex Standard Dia de los Muertos – $79
“The watch’s glowing INDIGLO® backlight also gives new vibrancy to the iconic skull design,” Timex’s webpage asserts, “highlighting it when you press the watch’s crown. This marked passage of time — the ticking of seconds, minutes and hours — should help remind us that we must embrace the changes of life if we hope to die with smiles on our faces.”
Now there’s a life goal. But you’ve got to give the Chinese watchmaker [sic] credit for creating a compelling 40mm lead-cased ode to The Big Sleep. Well maybe not that scene – unless we’re considering what the French call “le petit mort.” Anyway, I wonder . . .
How long will it be before people start recording a message to their descendents that automatically plays on their smartwatch on The Day of the Dead? Still, a video memento mori wouldn’t replace the scary cool vibe of the sugar skull watch. At least not entirely. Right?
The undone calavara is the dia de los muertos watch I want to get.