Knight Rider Retro Watches (er…watch review).
When I saw these watches on Ebay, I thought they deserved a closer look. I mean, if you can’t buy those expensive 1990s watch copies of the ‘Knight Rider’ commlink, then getting something that looks like it in modern times and at a much lower price has to be a good idea.
This firm actually does three watches. The first two are based on ‘Knight Rider’, one looking like the commlink and the other, part of the dashboard from KITT itself. The third, which I didn’t buy, is one based off the dashboard from the ‘Back To The Future’ DeLorean.
From the two I’ve got, they are well made, individually bagged so you don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to and can adjust the time through the bags so what’s not to love?
A lot of it is essentially window-dressing around a standard watch screen and dial but I bet it would become an instant talking point if you wore any of them in public.
Not sure what all 4 buttons do but if you want to correct the watches to the right time, press the top right button to show the screen and the bottom right to go through the settings, pressing the top right button to adjust the counters. The month is on left on the screen, the day on the right. The two buttons on the left just appear to give the time although I think you can use either of them to adjust the time as well but let’s not over-complicate things.
If I wanted to see some advances into the future (sic), it might be interesting to do a commlink that gave KITT giving responses, even if you would have to change your name to ‘Michael’.
I did have a ponder on what other watch faces this firm could explore but there aren’t that many you would call famous or have a digital face. I doubt if many people will remember the ‘Gemini Man’ watch that kept an eye on how much time he spent invisible in a day. The watch from the ‘Trancer’ films does show some possibilities with a slow 10 second countdown as everything goes into slow-mo.
Of course, the ideal one would be the Derek Flint watch from the two James Coburn films but that would have to be a little more sophisticated in having a screen light and numbers that rotate around the dial although I have seen some odd watches that do that, so maybe a conversion of one of those might make it work.
Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I seem to have pressed the send button on the commlink and a black T-top has announced its waiting outside my door.
GF Willmetts
June 2021
(pub: Custom-Cool. Price: each watch £ 9.95 (UK) plus postage. Presumably they have sales in other countries)
check out website: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/custom-cool/m.html?item=303858487568&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562
