Editor’s Note: After quickly selling out in its initial run, the Timex Marlin has now been restocked at the brand’s website.
During the 1960s, Timex came out with a series of advertisements starring news commentator and spokesperson John Cameron Swayze and featuring a variety of robust, waterproof mechanical Timex watches being put through torture tests. It was the genesis of the now famed slogan “takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” and an important era of Timex’s history. One of those watches was the Marlin, and now Timex is bringing it back. Further, rather than updating the watch with a quartz movement (which is Timex’s modus operandi), the brand is packing it with a hand-winding mechanical movement, making it a first in decades for the brand.
The Marlin really looks like a faithful remake of the original watch of the 1960s, even down to the very small (for 2017, anyway) 34mm case diameter. Other details like a domed acrylic crystal, silver sunray dial, mid-century Arabic numerals and “lizard-pattern” leather strap are emblematic of men’s watches from the era. And of course, there’s that mechanical movement inside, which “must be wound once per day,” according to Timex’s press material.
Currently, there’s not much known about the movement inside, though Worn & Wound reports that the back of the watch reads “MVMT China,” so it’s likely the movement comes from a Chinese manufacturer like Seagull or one of several other Chinese movement makers.
