OPINION: Are pop culture collabs the problem or the solution for watches?
For years, luxury watchmaking has felt like it had a fairly straightforward pitch: history, engineering and a healthy amount of self-importance.
Brands sold us moon landings, military provenance, and movements assembled by master watchmakers in tiny Swiss towns. Heritage wasn’t just part of the story; it was the story.
Then, somewhere along the way, Pac-Man entered the scene.
Lately, watch releases have started reading less like auction catalogues and more like entertainment schedules. We’ve had Star Wars collaborations, game-inspired releases, cartoon dials and, most recently, Timex leaning heavily into millennial nostalgia with its Space Jam 30th anniversary collaboration — a limited run featuring Bugs Bunny, a basketball seconds hand, and enough throwback energy to transport anyone born in the late 80s or early 90s straight back to VHS tapes and Saturday mornings.
Oh, and the Royal Pop collab between AP and Swatch has generated quite the stir too.
As a millennial, I get it. Nostalgia is powerful. We’re now at the age where we’re expected to make sensible choices, yet somehow still find ourselves irrationally excited by a Polly Pocket relaunch, a Hello Kitty collaboration, or anything remotely Y2K-coded. We grew up when pop culture wasn’t background noise — it shaped taste, identity, and entire personalities. So when watches borrow from that world, they aren’t just selling a collaboration, they’re selling familiarity.
To a certain type of collector, a cartoon character on a luxury watch probably feels like pairing couture with a novelty slogan tee. Luxury is supposed to be timeless. It’s meant to outlast trends, not chase them.
And I understand the argument. But dismissing collaborations entirely feels like missing a bigger point.
Because watch collecting can become strangely insular. Spend enough time around the industry and you realise how often it speaks almost entirely to itself: reference numbers, escapements, heritage narratives, and endless debates about case dimensions.
For existing collectors, that’s normal. For everyone else, it can sound like a private club where nobody explains the rules.
Pop culture shortcuts all of that.
Nobody needs a lecture on balance springs to understand Pac-Man or Bugs Bunny. You see it and immediately know what it means. More importantly, you feel something. And watches — despite how often we frame them as feats of engineering — have always been emotional purchases disguised as rational ones.
What’s interesting is seeing this shift become more visible during Geneva Watch Week itself. Alongside all the expected technical flexing and six-figure mechanical theatre, there was a noticeable sense that brands are becoming more comfortable with personality.
And perhaps that’s the bigger shift. Watches no longer just compete with each other; they compete for attention within culture itself.
So I don’t think the danger is collaboration; the danger is lazy collaboration. There’s a difference between building a watch around an idea and simply borrowing someone else’s audience for a sales spike.
But if a Space Jam release gets someone through the door — and eventually that person starts learning about perpetual calendars, movement finishing, or vintage references — then maybe that’s not dilution. Maybe that’s just evolution.
And if I’m choosing between a watch industry that occasionally takes itself too seriously and one willing to put Bugs Bunny on a dial, I know which sounds more fun.
