If you follow the opinions of my wife, then you know her preference for more timeless designs.  Keeping this in mind lets see what she has to say about the Swatch Tresor Magique today and then throw her a wrench and see if she ducks, dodges or dives!

Me: “Ok, so this is an early 90’s men’s watch; what would you say about the dial, the case and the overall style?”

Her: I don’t even want to touch it its so gross!” she exclaims laughing about her distaste for the mesh bracelet.  “I think it’s cool and if wizards were around, they would wear it and then be burned for wearing it because they were wizards!”  Consider that my wife hasn’t read anything on, or know anything about, the Magique…  “Its neat, I can see Stephan Hawking wear it or you know who! Neil deGrasse Tyson, and he would be such a pompous ass about it and say something like “…and this watch measures the units of gravity while in flux…” or maybe a beautiful tomorrow person like Bruno Mars!  But Burno Mars wouldn’t wear it, but a pretentious wanna-be would on Instagram would, but on a leather strap.  In a pose like when I got you that wood watch for Christmas and you posed with your elbow on your knee, like that!”  Our daughter comes stomping over to see what we’ve been up to for so long and my wife shows her the watch.  “What do you think of it sweetie?”

3 yo Daughter: “Uh huh!” she bellows as she snatches the watch from her mother for closer inspection.

Her: My wife tries to do the bracelet up on our daughters wrist but fumbles with the mesh bracelet’s two-step clasp, “Oh you mean you can’t do it up because it’s unnecessarily complicated [the bracelet]!”  My wife clearly doesn’t care for mesh, rice bead or Milanese style bracelets.  “Otherwise I like the face and it’s cool and our daughter likes it so much she’s running off with it to add it to her nest of shiny things!”

Me: After several minutes of coaxing our daughter final brings the Magique back within arms reach and we trade her for some typing time in Word on her mother’s laptop.  “Now, what if it were still the 90’s and I was wearing a turtleneck, you were wearing a sweatshirt with a wolf and moon on it and the kids were wearing XL tie dyed shirts; then what would you think about it?”

Her: “Then it would be somebody’s dad’s watch who watches Stark Trek: The Next Generation and plays with trains in his basement; he wears a Cosby style sweater and has an 80’s cop mustache.  I just can’t see regular people wearing this on a daily business.”

Me: “Well it was designed as a fashion watch…”

Her: “It’s not a fashion watch, novelty watch sure, but you don’t see lots of people walking around with Micky Mouse watches who are fashionable.  I also hate this band, it’s like the wooden snakes from the dollar store!  It’s really a women’s watch, you get a brown leather strap and it might look nice.”

Me: “So that’s my next question, what if it were a women’s watch?”

Her: “That’s why I said nerdy dad’s watch, because he has small wrists; it’s not a working man’s watch that’s for sure!

Me: “You know women’s watches are designed to be more jewelry than functional, which is kind of why you’ve seen so many women move to what was traditionally men’s sized watches, so a bit smaller than this one, in order to open up a world of tool watches for everyday use.”

Her: “I can’t see it on a woman, its just not pretty enough to be jewellery but it’s also not functional enough to be a daily work watch.  So that makes it a novelty watch for a niche market to me.”

Me: “So fun fact; the plastic glass on the front and back are plastic and are laser welded to the case so to get inside it you would have to cut your way in and even then the movement itself wasn’t designed to be repairable but rather it was meant to just be replaced.  Ever wonder why we live in a world full of unrecyclable plastic now?”

Jokes aside I expected my wife to absolutely tear the Magique apart and was surprised that she didn’t.  Her objective take that the watch is both non-functional and very polarizing in appearance drew her to the conclusion that only a unique type of person could ever love it.  As always, her take has given me both a new insight and an added perspective on the time piece and, in this case, I am left wondering if I should start building trains in the basement…