In case you live under a rock, let me break the news for you: H. Moser&Cie brought out a new watch, and it’s ugly. Not just ‘not my cup of tea’-ugly, just straight up Steve Buschemi-ugly.
Take a closer look, and search for references:
• The bezel shape is stolen from the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
• The bezel colour is stolen from the Rolex GMT Pepsi
• The crown guard and numerals are stolen from Panerai
• The crown with blue crystal is stolen from Cartier
• The logo and fond are stolen from IWC
• The dial and bracelet are stolen from the Patek Philippe Nautilus
• The case and screws are stolen from Hublot
• The golden bridge is stolen from Girard-Perregaux
• The hands are stolen from Breguet
Why would a respected brand like Moser commit such crimes?
Well, it’s all done on purpose. If you get to know Moser, you’ll find out that they are constantly trolling the watch industry. Moser&Cie are the guys that made a parody on the Apple watch, taking the shape of the Apple watch and fitting it with an amazing automatic movement. A big middle finger against smart watches.
Last year, they made ‘the most Swiss watch ever’. What does the most Swiss watch ever look like? Cheese. Not a picture of cheese, but actual cheese. Yes indeed, they made a watch out of cheese and priced it over a million euros.
This was mend as a big ‘F*ck You’ against Swiss watch brands that outsource most of their production, but still used a ‘made in Switzerland’ stamp. Fun fact, they were guilty as well.
Knowing this, we can look even further for Easter eggs. the Icons watch has a blue dial and blue hands, which makes reading the time a real struggle. They used a GMT bezel, but didn’t install a GMT function. The blue Cartier crystal in the crown is blocked by the Panerai-esque guard. In fact, it’s a big joke, literally.
Now that we got to know the brand, we can see why Moser made this watch. This time, it’s a middle finger against brands who keep milking the same cow for decades, using the same design without any form of innovation.
So no, it’s not an unoriginal rip-off, it’s genius marketing.
Kudos to Moser for having the balls to do this!
