Timex Brings Back The Mk1 With New Dials And Colorful Plastic Variants; Spinnaker Releases MORE SpongeBob Watches; A Titanium Fortis Novonaut; Paulin's Groovy Modul; And A Sensational Albishorn

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. A couple of fun watches today, but here’s a heads up. I’m all in preparation for Watches & Wonders and a new project we’re launching there, so I might have to skip a day or two in the next few weeks. That also lines up with fewer releases as we get closer to the big show, so bear with me.

In this issue:

• Timex Brings Back The Mk1 With New Dials And Colorful Plastic Variants

• Not Even A Week Later, Spinnaker Is Back With More SpongeBob Watches

• Fortis Gives The Novonaut A Titanium Case For Its Best Iteration To Date

• Paulin Teams Up With Chicago-Based Artist Crystal Zapata For A Very Groovy New Modul

• Albishorn’s Third Watch Is The Thundergraph, An Imaginary Timepiece Made To Conquer Everest

👂What’s new

1/

Timex Brings Back The Mk1 With New Dials And Colorful Plastic Variants

After World War II, the US military had to replenish a LOT of supplies. In the mid-1960s, they issued the MIL-W-46374 specification for a watch that will be supplied to servicemen. Three companies answered the tender — Hamilton, Benrus and Westclox — and millions of these things have been made since. One company that never made these service watches, despite what you might believe, is Timex. We just think they made these military watches because the company has always had some sort of lookalike watch in their lineup. The most famous is the Timex Camper from the 1980s, which came in resin, plastic and metal since, and was powered by everything from quartz to automatic. The Camper is a cult classic. But a few years ago, Timex replaced the Camper with the Mk1, their military inspired watch. Now, they are updating the collection, with a small manual-wind option, a larger automatic, both in steel, and two really cool plastic versions to attempt to hop on the colorful plastic watch trend.

Let’s start with the metal options first. They are very similar in look, just slightly different in size. They both have a fairly simple brushed look, with short lugs and an unguarded crown on the right side. The larger one measures 40mm wide and 12mm thick, while the smaller one comes in at 36mm wide and 10.3mm thick. They both feature acrylic crystals on top and 50 meters of water resistance. Even the dials are very similar. They both have flat black bases, large lumed hour numerals followed by smaller 24-hour numerals and lumed syringe hands.

The difference, other than the size, can be found in the 6 o’clock text — the larger one features the text Mk1 Automatic, while the smaller one reads Mk1 Mechanical. That gives away what’s happening inside. Timex is notoriously stingy with information on what’s inside. All we know is that one has a mechanical manual-wound movement, while the other is comes with an unspecified Miyota movement. The watches can be had on an olive green NATO-style strap on the smaller and a choice of green or tan Cordura strap. Price is set at €229 for the smaller watch and €259 for the larger one.

But there’s more. Reaching back to the whimsical legacy of the Camper, Timex is releasing a duo of resin-cased, colorful takes on the military classic. And they’re quite nice. Except for one thing. The watch comes in just the smaller 36mm case, but, surprisingly, it gains a lot in thickness. Despite being quartz powered, this watch measures a whopping 12mm thick. That will remain a head scratcher as to why they made it that thick. They both feature acrylic crystals on top and are water resistant, but just to 30 meters. You get a similar dial to the metal versions, but its color matched to the case, so, either yellow or orange. Both are powered by a quartz movement, come with color matched nylon straps and are priced at just €79. See more on the Timex website.

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Not Even A Week Later, Spinnaker Is Back With More SpongeBob Watches

It was last Monday that I wrote about a new collaboration, probably the fifth or sixth, between Spinnaker watches and SpongeBob Squarepants. And one of the comments on that article said: “Spinnaker seems really intent on becoming the SpongeBob watch brand.” I agreed in jest that that is a possibility and that I don’t mind it. However, I’m not so sure it’s a joke any more. Because Spinnaker is back with ANOTHER SpongeBob collaboration, the Fleuss Automatic SpongeBob SquarePants Conch Street Limited Edition. I like them as much as the next fella, but are we moving a bit fast over here? Sure, they seem to sell very fast, but still.

OK, to be perfectly fair, there’s something different about this Conch Street LE that I can’t exactly nail down. A couple of weeks ago, the collection appeared on Long Island Watch but sold out so fast I didn’t write about it. It’s also very buried in the Spinnaker website, so it doesn’t seem to be a regular release. Which is a good thing, as it might mean that you could get one of the hardest watches to get.

Being a Fleuss Automatic, a lot is a familiar here. It’s an oversized dive case made out of brushed steel and measuring 43mm wide, 13mm thick and with a 51mm lug-to-lug. On top is a sapphire crystal that’s surrounded by a really cool sapphire bezel that comes in a variety of colors, depending on the model. Water resistance is 150 meters.

There are four variants of the watch, all of which depict motifs you would find on underwater Conch Street in Bikini Bottom. All of the dials are also 3D moulded to contain details special for each edition — pineapple segments, sponge holes, portholes, as well as applied 3D effect numerals at the cardinal positions… Pineapple House gets an orange and yellow split sapphire bezel, with na orange and yellow dial. Patrick Pants has a coral and lime green bezel with a fully lumed yellow dial and purple splats. Then, there’s Pink Gary with a fully lumed blue and green bezel with a fully lumed pink dial. Last, we have Yellow Sponge with a blue and yellow bezel and a yellow lumed dial. It’s all lot to take in, but I love it.

Inside, you’ll find a very familiar budget option of the Seiko NH35. It’s not particularly accurate, but it is easily servicable, beats at 21,600vph and has a 41 hour power reserve. The watches come on rubber tropic-style that are color matched to one of the bezel colors.

The Spinnaker Fleuss Automatic SpongeBob SquarePants Conch Street Limited Edition is available now at a price of €370. Now, technically, two of the watches — the Pink Gary and Yellow Sponge — are sold out on the Spinnaker website, while the other two are available. However… It seems that all four are available on the Windup store, so you might want to get them there. See the collection on the Spinnaker website or on Windup.

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Fortis Gives The Novonaut A Titanium Case For Its Best Iteration To Date

One of my favorite watches of last year was the Fortis Novonaut AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer. We don’t talk about Fortis nearly enough as I would want to, but I always keep an eye out for them for their incredibly charming tool watches that look like they were made in another decade, but are certainly very timeless. The AMADEE-24 Mars Analog Mission Timer was a bit of a wild take on the Novonaut, their replacement for the B-42 Cosmonauts Chronograph, modified for Mars exploration, but what they just released might be my favorite Novonaut. This is the new Novonaut N-42 Titanium Legacy.

This is very much an old-school sports chronograph, something that would feel very much at home in the 1990s and early 2000s with its large size. The case measures 42mm wide (44mm up top at the bezel), 15mm thick and has a 51mm lug-to-lug. This is exactly what I want from a chronograph like this, but I understand it will be too large for a lot of enthusiasts. It should be easier to wear thanks to the new titanium case and bracelet, which cuts down the weight by a third from the steel version. On top is a bidirectional bezel with a matte ceramic 60-minute insert and lumed markers and numerals. It also gets 200 meters of water resistance, which is rare in chronographs, especially those that don’t have screw down pushers.

The dial is as classic as the case. It has a matte black base with three circular grained sub-dials positioned at 6, 9 and 12 o’clock. At 3 o’clock, you’ll find the day and date apertures, with the Fortis logo above and Novonaut text underneath. The obelisk style hands are brushed and filled with blue-glowing Super-LumiNova and the watch gets a 3N-gold-plated lollipop chronograph seconds hand. The spaces not filled with other information get Arabic numerals made out of block of the same blue-glowing lume.

Inside, you might expect to find the Valjoux 7750. After all, it has the iconic 7750 display layout. However, what you’ll actually find is the Fortis Werk 17. Sure, it’s based on the 7750 architecture, but it’s heavily changed by La Joux-Perret. It has a custom traversing bridge and tangential micro-screw regulation for added strength and stability, while beating at 4Hz, with a 60 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a three link titanium bracelet with a quick adjust clasp.

The new Novonaut N-42 Titanium Legacy edition is available now and priced at €5,800. See more on the Fortis website.

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Paulin Teams Up With Chicago-Based Artist Crystal Zapata For A Very Groovy New Modul

The Scottish watch industry is going through a bit of a renaissance these past few years. And at the crest of the new wave sit anOrdain, known for their beautiful and affordable enamel dial pieces, and their sister brand Paulin, known for their colorful and quirky designs, and great prices. The latest release from Paulin just continues that trend. They have collaborated with Chicago-based artist and designer Crystal Zapata for a Modul that just oozes 70s cool.

Based on the smaller of the Paulin models, which is a 1970s-style C-shaped case. It measures 35mm wide, just 8.2mm thick and has super short lugs which give it a L2L measurement of a tiny 40mm. On top is a vintage-style Hesalite box-crystal. The case has a brushed finish on the flat surfaces and polished facets. Water resistance is 50 meters.

While the case is the same, the dial is brand new and designed by Zapata, who is an accomplished type designer. And you can see it here. She uses Arabic numerals in the cardinal positions, but they are stretched and blurred so that they cover almost the entire dial. Almost like a star trail you get when taking long exposure photos. Which makes sense, as the two models are called Day and Night. Day comes with a silver base dial, while Night comes with a dark blue one, while both get light blue numerals.

Just like there’s no choice in the size of the case, something that’s common in the rest of the Modul line, there’s also no choice in movements. The rest of the line gets both quartz and mechanical movements, but this one comes only with the ETA 955.112 quartz movement. The watches come on Paulin’s Milanese strap.

The new Paulin Zapata Modul watches are available now and priced at €464. See more on the Paulin website.

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Albishorn’s Third Watch Is The Thundergraph, An Imaginary Timepiece Made To Conquer Everest

There are two modern and recently launched watch brands that just drive me crazy with how awesome their watches are. One is Kollokium, which gives us a truly unique take on a lumed dial. But while Kollokium keeps putting out what is essentially the same watch in different colors, the other brand that’s lining rent free in my head, Albishorn, is doing something completely different. In less than a year (in fact, almost less than six months), Albishorn has come out with three models that reflect their mission of creating “imaginary vintage” watches, ones that could have existed at a time in history, but never did. The first one was the Maxigraph, a hypothetical 1930s wrist chronograph that might have been commissioned by a competitor in the 1939 Bol d’Or regatta on Lake Geneva. The second watch was the Type 10 Chronograph, a never-made predecessor of the iconic Type 20 Chronograph pilot’s watch. Now, we’re getting the third watch and it has a hell of a cool name — the Albishorn Thundergraph, a chronograph that could have been made for alpine exploration in the early 1950s and worn by the Swiss expedition to Mount Everest in 1952, a year before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, that was forced to turn back just 250 meters from the summit.

While the Thundergraph uses the same case as the Maxigraph and the Type 10, but with slight tweaks, it looks like its own unique watch. It has a stainless steel case that measures 39mm wide at the case and 42.7mm at the oversized, bi-directional, rotating bezel, 13mm thick and with a 47.7mm lug-to-lug. It’s a curious looking watch, fully round — almost like a sporty disco volante — with a bronze crown at 10 o’clock and a wide red aluminium chronograph pusher that sits almost flush with the case at 9 o’clock, making it easy to operate with your thumb. On top is a box sapphire crystal surrounded by a flat, wide and dramatically sloping silver brushed bezel that has an engraved 60-minute scale.

The dial borrows heavily from the Type 10 and that’s a very good thing. The Type 10 has one of the more unique sub-dial setups, where you get two large chronograph sub-dials at 5 and 7 o’clock, taking up the entire bottom half of the dial, for a very unique look. But on the Thundergraph, Albishorn calls this a “California ghost dial”. Where a regular California dial would have Roman numerals on one half and Arabic numerals on the other, this dial has only oversized lumed Roman numerals on the top part and those very cool registers on the other. The base of the dial has a petroleum blue brushed finish and you also get large triangular indexes. Everything, including the gold toned, brushed, pencil hands is filled with beige Super-LumiNova.

Inside, you’ll find the calibre ALB03 M. While based on the 7750 architecture (more specifically, the Sellita SW510M, which makes sense as Albishorn is headed by Sebastien Chaulmontet, a known chronograph specialist who has worked as Head of Innovation and Marketing at Sellita and head of innovation and product development at Manufacture La Joux-Perret SA), it’s a proprietary hand-wound, monopusher. The cool details are all over the place. The red pusher at 9 sits perfectly under your thumb to start, stop and reset the chrono, and if you look closely at the watch, you’ll notice that they managed to get the two cool sub-dial positions just by rotating the movement (which would have sub-dials at 12 and 9 o’clock if it were regularly oriented) so that the crown comes out at 10. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 65 hours. The watch comes on a petroleum blue grained leather strap and a matte beige leather strap.

The new Albishorn Thundergraph is, unfortunately, limited to just 99 pieces that will be made over three years and priced at a pretty great CHF 3,650 without taxes. See more on the Albishorn website.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• In a world of generative AI, artists like Kim Van Deun are finding themselves in an industry with dwindling opportunities. Enter Ben Zhao, a University of Chicago professor and, as Kelley Engelbrecht describes him, “a computer scientist who genuinely loves art.” In Zhao’s work at the university’s SAND Lab, this appreciation for art is loud and clear. His team has developed tools, such as Glaze and Nightshade, that shield artists’ work from AI models that scrape and train on images without consent. Engelbrecht’s Chicago Magazine story explores the importance of human creativity in a world where machines increasingly mimic art.

• More than 60,000 people a year take the first step to auditioning for Jeopardy!: a written test. If you pass that, you do a little mock round, talk to the producers, and hope you get the call to come on the show. Harvey “H-Bomb” Silikovitz knows that all too well; since 2001, he’s auditioned for the show 10 times. Thankfully, the tenth time was the charm, and he finally appeared on the show this week. For The Ringer, Claire McNear answers every question (questions ever answer?) you might have about this tale of perseverance.

• In this essay, Rosecrans Baldwin comprehensively covers all things sperm: sperm counts, sperm quality, sperm donors, embryonic selection, and IVF. He even looks to the future with IVG, or in vitro gametogenesis, where non-reproductive cells from a person’s body are reprogrammed into stem cells, and those stem cells are differentiated into eggs and sperm. In theory, you could reproduce with yourself—harrowing stuff. Baldwin is also not afraid to put himself in the test seat, sending his own sperm for analysis, and then, ultimately, deciding to commit to a vasectomy. Truly a deep dive!

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I think I mentioned several times how much I like these restoration videos. Especially when you want to zone out a bit. But this restoration video is a bit special

Thanks for reading,
Vuk