So, novelty watches. Man, what a ride that was. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and decided to become a connoisseur of weird wrist gadgets. Nah, it kinda just… happened. Like a slow, creeping accumulation of things I probably didn’t need.
How It All Began
I think it started with one of those super cheap digital watches I picked up at a street market, probably on vacation. It had some bizarre, almost unreadable display, and the strap felt like it would dissolve in water. But it was like, five bucks. How could I say no, right? That was the gateway, I guess. Just a silly, throwaway thing.
Then, for a while, it seemed like everywhere I looked, there was some kind of goofy watch winking at me. You know the type:
- Watches shaped like cartoon characters, where the hands were their arms.
- Ones with LED messages scrolling across the face. Super high-tech in the 90s, I tell ya.
- Those “binary” watches that you needed a PhD to actually read.
- And oh, the ones with weird sound effects! Beep, boop, vroom! Annoying as heck after about five minutes.
I wasn’t actively hunting them down, not at first. They’d just appear – a gift from a well-meaning aunt, something I’d grab from a bargain bin because it made me chuckle, or a freebie from some promotion. My drawer started to look like a museum of bad taste and questionable engineering.
The Reality of “Novelty”
Let me be straight with you: most of these novelty watches are pure junk. I learned that the hard way. The cool design or funny feature? That was usually skin deep. Underneath, it was often the cheapest mechanism they could find. I had straps break if I looked at them wrong. Batteries would die with alarming speed – sometimes within weeks. And don’t even get me started on accuracy. Some of them lost or gained time so fast, they were basically just wrist ornaments.
I remember this one watch, it was supposed to look like a retro arcade game. Super cool, right? It lasted about three days before the display just… faded to black. Tried changing the battery, no dice. It became a tiny, expensive paperweight. Another one had liquid inside with a little floating thing. Guess what? It leaked. All over my cuff. Not a good look.
It got to a point where I’d buy one, and it was almost a game to see how long it would last. Was it a good use of money? Absolutely not. But there was a certain, I dunno, absurd charm to it all.
So, Why Bother?
Why did I even keep getting them, you ask? Good question. Sometimes I asked myself that when I was trying to pry open a tiny battery compartment with a screwdriver that was clearly too big. I guess, for a short while, they were fun. They were conversation starters. Someone would see some ridiculous flashing thing on my wrist and go, “What IS that?!” And I’d have a silly story.
They were also an escape from the “serious” world. My day job could be stressful, and then I’d look down and see a watch that looked like a slice of pizza, and it was just… dumb. And sometimes dumb is exactly what you need. It was never about telling time accurately. I had my phone for that, like everyone else. These were purely for the novelty, the silliness of it all.
Where I’m At Now
Eventually, the novelty wore off, mostly. The drawer of misfit watches got cleaned out during a big declutter. Most of them were dead, broken, or just too embarrassing to even keep for a laugh. I found out that having one reliable watch that actually, you know, works is way less hassle.
Do I still get tempted? Yeah, sometimes. I’ll be walking through a store, and some brightly colored, utterly pointless timepiece will catch my eye. My brain will go, “Ooh, shiny!” for a second. But then I remember the dead batteries, the broken straps, the general disappointment. Most of the time, I walk away now. Most of the time.
I guess my main takeaway from my whole novelty watch phase is that some things are just meant to be a fleeting bit of fun. Not everything needs to be a long-term investment or a high-quality piece of craftsmanship. Sometimes, a cheap laugh is all you’re after, even if it ends up in the bin a month later. And that’s okay, I suppose. Just don’t expect it to actually tell you the time when you really need it.
