Nostalgia vs the New

I'm very skeptical of nostalgia, but I'm not completely unsusceptible to it. I imagine myself riding motorcycles that kick-start only, no push-button starting, with drum brakes and spoke wheels. I think about telephones hard-wired to land lines, libraries with no computers, only card catalogs, where due dates were stamped in ink with devices which first were pressed into inkpads. I don't remember nails coming to hardware stores in little wooden kegs, but I remember people who didn't realize that nails no longer shipped that way, and I really wish I'd seen some of those nail kegs.

But I don't want to be deprived of all of the improvements in technology which have been made over the past several decades, and I think that people who believe they are whole-heartedly nostalgic are not thinking it through, because they also do not want to give up those advances either.

Take mechanical watches: most of them are designed to look very similar to watches made between 1940 and 1970. But the new watches require maintenance much less frequently, run much longer on a single winding, are far less likely to be damaged when dropped, and these and other improvements are the result of recent technology. There's even a very popular recent innovation which completely changes its appearance when you take it off and turn it around: the  glass exhibition caseback which allows you to see the mechanical movement which reminds you of earlier times, but which engineers and craftspeople at the watch companies have been relentlessly modernizing and improving. Buyers of mechanical watches exhibit strong nostalgia tendencies, but only in very rare cases are they actually interested in buying old watches.

And then there are quartz watches. Many of them are also designed to resemble watches made half a century ago. And then there are ones like this:

Not only do they resemble few if any watches made before 1980 -- there were few if any objects of any kind which looked anything like that back then. Maybe in Vivienne Westwood's workshop. This is the opposite of nostalgic, this is wholeheartedly new. 

Like I said, I feel nostalgia sometimes, and I can appreciate objects which remind me of the mid-20th century, especially if they come with up-to-the-minute quality and durability and other virtues which didn't exist back when. 

But I think I like wholeheartedly new stuff better. Things which are not only up-to-the-minute in terms of how they work, but also in how they look. If it makes people think I'm having a mid-life crisis, I don't care. Do they realize I'm looking at them too and thinking this and that? Don't worry, I'm not thinking mean things.

A Couple of New G-Shocks

Originally, these were offered for sale only in China, and each watch came with one or more of these bears.

Casio refers to these watches as the Shanghai Night series. They are limited editions. The upper one in the picture with the more rectangular, digital-only display, is the GM5600SN-1, and the lower one in the picture, with analog hour and minute hands in addition to digital screens, is the GM110SN-2A. 

I have not yet been able to find out what Shanghai Night refers to. For all I know it could simply refer to the city of Shanghai, at night. Or perhaps "Shanghai Night" is a Chinese or Japanese or Chinese-Japanese animated TV series starring bears who look like the metallic doll in the picture. Or maybe something else. I'm just guessing. 

I'm writing this blog post today because, somehow, I didn't realize until yesterday, that the GM5600SN-1 has that rainbow IP coating on its case, the kind which I've thus far only seen on a handful of G-shocks, and now also these little metallic bears, and which really triggers me in a very positive way, and not just me, apparently. Yesterday I noticed that Casio had put the GM5600SN-1 on sale in the US. The watch only, sold in the US without a bear. Suggested retail price $260. Still available from authorized dealers at retail, it seems. I saw a commercial for it on YouTube. A young man was wearing one in a nighttime urban landscape which, I assume, was Shanghai. Wait -- it's a woman, not a man. Wait... I don't know whether it's a woman or a man. It's a very androgynous young person wearing a very handsome watch coated with rainbow IP.

The GM110SN-2A, the rounder one with the hour and minute hands, although it has an extremely colorful dial, does not, as far as I can see, have any rainbow IP. The case is has a bright blue IP, but it's not rainbow, with one color bleeding into the next. And it's still only offered in China. Which is to say, it's only offered by authorized dealers in China. I've seen one on sale on ebay for around $1000. In terms of functionality, it's the same GM110 that Producer Michael bought last autumn, the one which made him and me, and many others who saw his video, interested in G-Shocks.

I don't understand anything about the technical challenges involved in applying the rainbow IP to a metal surface. It could be that it's extremely difficult to do, and maybe that's why I've only seen it on limited edition G-Shocks, apart from a very small amount of rainbow IP applied to one part of the dial of the GM110-B, which, although not officially a limited edition, seems to have been sold out for a while now. I would love to see Casio put rainbow IP on mass-produced G-Shocks, millions of them, but, whether for technical reasons or marketing reasons or some other reasons, it doesn't appear that that will happen soon.

To those already familiar with the G-Shock brand, the interest of both of these new models is a matter of styling. In terms of function, they are both ordinary mid-level G-Shocks.

To those unfamiliar with the G-Shock brand, it may be surprising to learn that ordinary mid-level G-shocks, in addition to being extremely accurate, dependable and tough, also include world time, stopwatch, countdown timer, alarm, chiming and backlight functions, all with a very great deal of customization available to those willing to study the thick G-Shock owner's manuals.

Rainbow IP G-Shocks

I've written many posts on this blog about watches, and up until now I've always insisted that watches have not served any practical purpose for several decades now, because other devices take care of all of the things we used to need watches for. Watches have become art, according to Oscar Wilde's definition:

"All art is quite useless."

But then, back in March, I started to learn about G-Shocks, the very popular line of quartz watches made by the Japanese corporation Casio. G-Shocks can do so many things that I've started to wonder whether they can realistically be regarded as mere beautiful and useless works of art. 

Ironically, what first aroused my interest in G-shocks was seeing photos and video of a limited edition watch, the GM-110RB-2A, also known as the "Rainbow,"

which is definitely intended to be understood as a thing of exceptional beauty, among other things. 

But besides being beautiful, it is also a GM-110 G-Shock, which means that it has a wide range of functions including world time, several alarms, several timers, several stopwatches and a push-button background light. 

"Rainbow" refers to the way that the IP, the ion plating, on the cover and bezel of the watch blends from one color into another. There are two other limited edition G-Shocks which, like the GM-110RB-1A, were released in 2020, feature rainbow IP very prominently, and which I consider to be especially beautiful: the GWF-A1000BRT-1A, also known as the "Borneo Rainbow Toad,"

and the MTG-B1000VL-4A,

 

also known as the "Volcanic Lightning."

The GWF-A1000BRT-1A was made in recognition of the Borneo rainbow toad, a species which had been believed to have gone extinct a century ago, until it was recently found to be still alive. The colors and patterns imitate the colors and bumps found on the toad. The "Volcanic Lighning" is meant to convey some of the intensity of thinderstorms caused by volcanos. The distinctive translucent red strap imitates the appearance of molten lava. 

The "Rainbow" actually belongs to one of the simpler and lower-priced versions of the G-Shock. The "Borneo Rainbow Toad" and the "Volcanic Lightning" are high-end models, and in addition to all of the functions mentioned above which the "Rainbow" can perform, each also feature solar charging, atomic time, Bluetooth, and a long list of other functions which I won't pretend I understand yet. The "Rainbow" was released with an MSRP of $280, and the "Borneo Rainbow Toad" and the "Volcanic Lightning" each had an MSRP of $1,100, which put them among the very highest-priced G-Shocks. 

Today, those MSRP's are primarily of historical interest, as all three watches are on sale at much higher prices. The "Rainbow" doesn't seem to be available from well-known, reputable dealers at all anymore. I wonder whether this might be because the well-known dealers have waiting lists of close friends and good customers who have already agreed on a purchase price if and when the dealer acquires a "Rainbow." That would explain why we in the general public never see it on sale from those dealers. 

So: what got me interested in G-Shocks was beauty. I love the way these limited editions look, with the rainbow IP and the other bold colors. 

But once I got interested in G-Shocks, I began to learn about all of the practical things they can do: in addition to everything listed above, various models can also measure how many steps you take, your heart rate and blood pressure, the atmospheric temperature and barometric pressure and altitude, your depth underwater, the tides, and many, many other things. 

And the more I study G-Shocks, the more I appreciate that not only special limited editions like these ones are beautiful. It's clear that Casio concentrates very hard on aesthetics right alongside function. 

So my previous notions about the uselessness of watches are being challenged, at least in the case of a few very highly-functional watches like these, and their somewhat less-colorful siblings, the non-limited-edition G-Shocks. 

The $2,000 dollars which you might have to pay today for a "Borneo Rainbow Toad" or a "Volcanic Lightning" is less than the cost of ANY new watch from many of the luxury brands. $2,000 seems like a lot compared to the $50 and less you'd pay for some other G-Shocks. But it's less than the cost of any new Rolex or Omega. Something to think about. Some G-Shock fans regard a 4-figure MSRP as just shocking and wrong, let alone paying above MSRP for a limited edition. 

Another thing which is discussed is whether special edition G-Shocks like these should be worn in everyday life and exposed to being scratched and smudged and the other things which everyday life does. I feel very strongly about this: I think it is very sad when beautiful things like this are locked away and never enjoyed, for fear of scratches and dust and so forth. Others seem to feel just as strongly that it's a shame when a collector's item is scratched because its owner didn't treat it like a museum piece. 

I'm open to discussion. My mind changes sometimes. Look at me right now, writing about quartz watches. That represents a huge change in my mind. Three months ago I didn't really know about G-Shocks and didn't care.