In this episode of Know Your Stuff, we're joined by Editors Steve Mazzucchi and Johnny Brayson, Gear Patrol's resident watch expert to discuss one of the seemingly strangest subgenres in watch culture today – Snoopy Watches.
Welcome to Know Your Stuff, a podcast where we unbox trends in consumer culture, one topic at a time.
In this episode, our editors sat down to discuss the key milestones over the past century that helped vault Snoopy the Beagle into the most beloved animated character in watchmaking. To understand the trend, they talk through the surprising history of character watches in general before digging into how the beloved cartoon beagle Snoopy became intertwined with NASA's space program, which in turn spawned some of the most sought-after watches in recent years.
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Mykim Dang: Welcome to Know Your Stuff, a podcast where we unbox trends in consumer culture, one topic at a time. I'm your host, Mykim Dang. Today, we're joined by editors Steve Mazzucchi and Johnny Brayson, a resident watch expert. In this episode, they discuss one of the seemingly strangest subgenres in watch culture today, aka Snoopy watches.
Mykim Dang: To understand the trend, they talked through the surprising history of the character watches in general, before digging into how the beloved cartoon beagle Snoopy became intertwined with NASA's space program, which in turn spawned some of the most sought after watches in recent years.
Steve Mazzucchi: Hey Johnny, I've been doing a little watch shopping lately and I can't help noticing there's a lot of Snoopy themed watches out there. And, you being our resident watch guy, I'm curious What the deal is.
Johnny Brayson: Steve, I'm glad you asked. For the past several years, Snoopy watches have really become almost a category unto itself, and I think to understand the trend, you've got to go back through the history of what we call character watches, which began way back in the 1930s when a company called Ingersoll first licensed Mickey Mouse to put on a watch.
Johnny Brayson: Uh, yes.
Steve Mazzucchi: Mickey Mouse definitely have seen him and his little arms on many a watch face as well.
Johnny Brayson: Many a watch face. And most of those watches were very affordable. A lot of times either intended for children or worn by children. And Mickey was not the only character Snoopy first appeared on a watch in the 1950s made by another affordable brand called Armatron.
Johnny Brayson: And these cartoon character watches were Fairly prevalent, uh, throughout the 20th century, but were never considered a serious watch for obvious reasons. It wasn't until the mid 80s when Gerald Genta, who, do you know who that is?
Steve Mazzucchi: I do! Our listeners might, so feel free to expand. But I do associate him with what, like Royal Oak, I want to say?
Steve Mazzucchi: Exactly. Yeah,
Johnny Brayson: so he is, uh, He's the one watch designer who most casual watch enthusiasts are going to recognize his name. If you think of, you know, the Rolex Submariner, the Omega Speedmaster, some of these iconic watches, nobody knows who designed them. But Gerald Genta is the one guy who, for whatever reason, was able to get his name.
Johnny Brayson: Out there as a known designer. So you mentioned the Royal Oak made by Audemars Piguet. That's probably his best known creation. The Patek Philippe Nautilus is another one. IWC Ingenieur, uh, Universal Genève, Polerouter. There's a bunch, like his fingerprints are all over, you know, some of the greatest watches of the latter half of the 20th century, and he had his own eponymous brand in the 1980s.
Johnny Brayson: And in 1984, he was exhibiting at a fancy watch trade show in Switzerland with a French name that I'm incapable of pronouncing. And he was set to present watches, which featured cartoon characters on the dial. He had Mickey Mouse, he had a Pink Panther. And prior to the start of the show, um, the organizers of the show approached him and And we're like, this is a hilarious prank we're trying to pull here.
Johnny Brayson: This is cute. Yeah, but you need to get these off your table before the show actually starts. And he, as the story goes, he refused to remove the character watches, because these were not just any character watches. These were legitimate luxury watches. They had gold cases. They cost ten thousand dollars. He was serious about this.
Johnny Brayson: This wasn't just like a joke. He refused to remove them from his display, and he ended up leaving the show altogether, rather than remove the character watches, because he took it as the industry at large, the Swiss luxury watch industry, being stodgy and stuck in its ways, and
Steve Mazzucchi: Sorry to interrupt, but, and maybe I missed it, but what happened after this, after Genta left that show?
Johnny Brayson: So he went on to release His character watches throughout the 80s. He had a licensing deal with Disney and, um, he put out several of these watches that were very high end, highly complicated luxury watches featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. I think there's some goofy ones out there and the watches featured what came to be known as sort of his signature complication, which is a mix of a jumping hour and Which is on the dial, you'll have a digital display, digital meaning numbers, not electronics, but digital display with the hour.
Johnny Brayson: Every time you reach a new hour, the wheel jumps. So when it's one o'clock, it'll say one and then just switches to two. Okay. And then. Combined with a retrograde minutes. So that's where the minutes are displayed from zero to 60 in an arc on the dial. And a hand will follow along. And then once it hits 60, it then snaps back to zero as the hour jumps.
Johnny Brayson: And so these Disney watches, they're actually quite interesting in that they'll feature Mickey or Donald or whatever Disney character, sometimes playing a sport. Is there a
Steve Mazzucchi: soccer one by any chance?
Johnny Brayson: I'm almost positive there's at least one sucker. Oh man, I'm going to have to look that up. Okay. Alright. Um, they are quite pricey because they are, these were luxury watches to begin with high end mechanical complications and they, they fetch a pretty decent price on, on eBay if you can find some.
Johnny Brayson: Gotcha.
Steve Mazzucchi: Uh, I guess what's interesting here too is that the hoity toity watch show people did not take this seriously, but the market did. Like people bought these things and were into them.
Johnny Brayson: People bought them. I'm not. They made them for several years. So I don't know how, I don't have access to Joe Genta's sales data, the eighties.
Johnny Brayson: I don't know if they were like hot sellers, but they're certainly beloved now to the point actually where. Last year when LVMH, which now owns the Gerald Genta brand name, when they resurrected the brand, the first watch that they put out was a new version of the Mickey Mouse with retrograde minutes and an hour.
Johnny Brayson: So, uh, so this was made for Only Watch, which is a big charity event where a brand will make us a single watch to be auctioned off for charity and Obviously, they felt well enough about the history of the Genta character watches to re-enter the market with that as a big headliner.
Steve Mazzucchi: So this brings us to, you know, out of the 30s or the 50s or whatever into slightly more modern times and, you know, at least with this one watchmaker, there was a strain of people responding to this thing, but then it proliferated, right?
Steve Mazzucchi: After that,
Johnny Brayson: the whole character watch thing didn't really go mainstream and become this sort of machine until really the last decade. Okay. And the reason for that has to do with Omega. So Omega is obviously a huge brand, far less niche than. Gerald Genta. Mm-Hmm. But it's also a luxury brand. It's something that people strive for.
Johnny Brayson: And Omega's flagship watch is of course the Speedmaster. It's the watch that went to the moon. It's the watch that everybody knows. Mm-Hmm. . And in 2003, omega released a Speedmaster with Snoopy. But this wasn't just like an act of a branch, just randomly licensing a character and just having fun. Like Gerald Entzel was.
Johnny Brayson: This was a watch that was, like, backed by a pretty unique and interesting history. So, if we go back to the late 1960s, NASA was looking for a way to raise more public awareness about the space program and about the people involved with it, because it wasn't, you know, It wasn't just the astronauts that were responsible for these incredible feats.
Johnny Brayson: There were thousands of people that are involved in literally every single mission that help ensure that astronauts complete their mission and return home safely. So they came up with an idea of an award that would be presented by astronauts to NASA contractors and also just NASA civilian employees, um, people who, you know, People whom without they wouldn't have been able to safely complete these missions.
Johnny Brayson: And they wanted it to be a symbol that could be recognized and accepted by the general public and beloved. And in doing their research, they discovered that at the time, the most recognizable government symbol was Smokey the Bear. Oh, wow. Okay. Interesting. And so they wanted a space faring equivalent to Oh, Smokey in space would have been amazing.
Johnny Brayson: You'd have to put a shirt on. So I don't know.
Steve Mazzucchi: Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. And how do you fit a helmet over that hat?
Johnny Brayson: Yeah, the hat is, that's in his contract. It's in his rider. You can't lose the hat. Somebody came up with the idea of, why don't we do Snoopy? And it just so happened that the, the lunar module of Apollo 10 was nicknamed the Snoopy.
Johnny Brayson: His job was to snoop around on the lunar surface. So like the name Snoopy was already bandied about casually by astronauts. But when they approached Peanuts creator Charles Schultz with the idea, he was a big backer of the space program and ended up licensing Snoopy to NASA for free. Wow. In this award.
Johnny Brayson: So the award became known as the Silver Snoopy Award. It's a sterling silver pin and it's a rare honor to be given this award. Omega, as I mentioned, they, they supplied the Speedmaster to NASA starting in the 1960s It went on to be worn on the moon. It was worn by the astronauts throughout the Apollo missions, including on Apollo 13 and the Speedmaster actually played a role in that mission where.
Johnny Brayson: You know because they had to shut off all their equipment with the problems they were having If you've seen tom hanks and kind of bacon struggling, they used the omega to time the engine burns Which was very critical for them actually making it home safely.
Steve Mazzucchi: Uh, some people think omega orchestrated that whole Uh, disaster as a promotional move.
Steve Mazzucchi: I mean, cause some people
Johnny Brayson: think Omega orchestrated the whole moon landing. So, yeah. So Omega was awarded the Silver Snoopy award in 1970. Okay. Uh, but yeah, it was for like their entire role in the space program up to that point. It wasn't until 2003 when they first came out with a Snoopy watch and that one I think hit maybe a little early.
Johnny Brayson: This is pre social media, pre hype culture. But fast forward 10 years and in 2015, 12 years, Omega came out with a second Silver Snoopy watch as a 45th anniversary version. One was a monochrome black and white speedy, it had Snoopy on the dial, it had a little slogan of what can you do in 14 seconds on the tachymeter, because that's how long it took for them to time the engine burns.
Johnny Brayson: Ah, okay. So it, it became a, an extremely popular item and highly sought after. Fast forward another five years, 2020, Omega comes out with a 50th anniversary Silver Snoopy. Maybe the coolest watch that Megan's ever made for one is another white Speedmaster, but with a blue Panda layout. So it's just, it's beautiful, but it also has notably an animated case back.
Johnny Brayson: So when the,
Steve Mazzucchi: uh, yes, I know the one you're talking about.
Johnny Brayson: Yeah. There's like outer space and you can see earth on the back of it and the surface of the moon. And then when you run the chronograph, Snoopy actually flies by inside the Snoopy lunar capsule. And so that watch it's been out for four years now.
Johnny Brayson: And it's still nearly impossible to get. It's notorious for having these years long wait lists where if you want to buy one at retail and it's roughly a 10, 000 watch, you have to wait years. And because of that, as we've seen with a lot of Rolex sports models, it's the same situation where if you want one right away, you're going to pay probably double on the secondary market.
Johnny Brayson: Yeah. And so that watch in particular. I think is really responsible for the spate of Snoopy watches we've seen just over the past few years. Cause I think a lot of people really desire that watch especially and having all of these alternatives pop up has given people the opportunity to get this cartoon beagle on their wrist without waiting years or spending tens of thousands of dollars.
Johnny Brayson: So I think that's why most of the Snoopy watches that are out there now are from brands like Timex or Swatch. Swatch even put out a couple of Moon Swatches this year with Snoopy, which are, that's an Omega collab, so it's very directly Right, and
Steve Mazzucchi: that probably has boosted interest in that original Omega as well.
Johnny Brayson: The Moon Swatch, in general, boosted Speedmaster sales, so yeah, I'm sure that even more people are now kind of longing for that Omega. But even on the higher end as well, Bamford watch department, they've had a few Snoopy collabs, including one, um, fairly recently with Frank Mueller that had a MSRP of 30, 000.
Johnny Brayson: So that's almost like if the Snoopy Speedy is, is too pedestrian for you, then you can even go higher for a Snoopy watch.
Steve Mazzucchi: Does it do anything cool?
Johnny Brayson: Like Snoopy floating by in the lunar module? It does something cool. I wouldn't say it does something that cool, but this watch is, it has Frank Mueller's signature crazy hours complication.
Johnny Brayson: So the watch, instead of being laid out one through 12, the numbers are out of order on the dial. And then the hands, which are Snoopy's hands, every time you reach a new hour, they then flip to wherever the next hour is. So if three o'clock is at the normal spot where eight o'clock would be, Once it's three o'clock, the hand just shoots over down to that eight o'clock where the three is. For most of us, we hear Timex and we think of something much more accessible. And in general, just the notion of, of Collabs has been something that, yeah, in the internet hype era, we see all the time and there've been a ton of like collaborative watch efforts. But I'm curious for somebody who, like me, Wants to score a Snoopy watch, but doesn't want to spend 10,000 or get on a waiting list or any of that sort of thing, what are some options that are more accessible?
Steve Mazzucchi: The moon
Johnny Brayson: swatches are, they're really cool, but like most moon swatches, they're not easy to get the Snoopy ones, which also feature a moon phase complication, which is another fun little feature of those swatches. Those are going to be hard to get. So I think the actual cost of them is not
Steve Mazzucchi: that high.
Johnny Brayson: But you, yeah, they're like 300 something dollars.
Johnny Brayson: It's just, it's the issue of having to physically be there and having them in stock, which are two pretty big challenges. And
Steve Mazzucchi: so you can get them online on the secondary market, but probably not for 300 I'm guessing.
Johnny Brayson: Exactly. Yeah. The price is again, going to be inflated and they're going to be rare cause there's not that many of them.
Johnny Brayson: So I think they came out maybe around the beginning of 2024. So I think. The secondary market was probably saw an initial wave of flippers trying to get rid of them and they'll make a quick buck off of them. But I think now that they've been out for a while, they're probably they're not going to pop up as often.
Johnny Brayson: So if you are in the market for a Snoopy watch, I honestly would just go to Timex. Timex has a whole peanuts line. Some of them have the whole gang. Some of them just featured Charlie Brown. Some have Woodstock. But obviously, a lot features Snoopy. My personal favorite is one that sort of recalls a lot of the classic character watches that would use the character's arms as the hands of the watch, but it's a mechanical watch.
Johnny Brayson: It's part of Timex's Marlin collection. Okay. And this is a, it's a tennis themed watch. So Snoopy is holding a racket. Which is one of the hands and then another hand is represented by a tennis ball. That's on a clear hand So it looks like it's just floating around the dial Uh huh, and you can get this for around 200 bucks for a mechanical timex with Snoopy Yeah And I think that's the closest thing you can get to emulate the fun you might get from that really cool and impossible to buy Omega for a couple hundred bucks.
Steve Mazzucchi: Wow. Yeah. Much better deal. And I've heard good things about the Marlin in general. That seems like a better bet unless Frank Muller wants to send me one of those 30, 000 ones just to review, hold onto for a little bit.
Mykim Dang: Thanks for listening to this episode of Know Your Stuff. This week's episode was produced and hosted by me, Mykim Dang, with special thanks to Zen Love, Johnny Brason, and Steve Mazzucchi.
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