STUFF Vol.4
Once upon a time, I was getting quite sick of all this collecting and hoarding of video game related crap. Not sick enough to stop collecting and hoarding, mind you, I was just sick of the spending, and the gathering, and not having room for any of the crap I buy. I decided it was high time to start enjoying.
Enter the Atari Anniversary Asteroids watch from Fossil. Not sure that's exactly what it's called, but that's close enough for me not to cross-reference the name. This was ostensibly the perfect fit to get me back to enjoying the game-related products on which I'm spending a good chunck of my income: it has a practical purpose (telling time), it looks badass (the gameplay animation goes on for as long as Duke Nukem Forever delays and there's a good deal of engraving) and it incorporates a game I hold in the highest esteem (Asteroids is the oldest game I still truly enjoy) and it was commemorating a landmark (Atari's 35's Anniversary - kind of an odd birthday to bring out these stops if I say so myself... FYI, according to the metal-stampped back, there are 5,000 of these babies out there, and I have number 4,105).
To boot, I spied a watch without that unique box seen in the picture above (edit: it seems I neglected to do the most basic thing of taking still shots of my wares) that also had some strap damage. It was also $90 less than the MSRP ($40 vs. $130), so if I wanted to save these smackers, I would more or less have to buy something with more practical, as opposed to collectable, implications. So I did. I was the high bidder of an auction from a seller called ivey! who, by the way, is no longer a registered user of eBay. And it was good.
Well, not entirely. As far as practicality is concerned, this thing tends to fall short. For one, and this can be gleaned by looking at the image up there, but telling time can be needlessly difficult. I know, it's got those dots at the margins, but I'm used to numbers in the body. I can imagine how this would negatively impact the presentation, so no points are taken off here.
However, points are taken off because this thing is impractically enormous (which is, on a 1024X786 resolution screen about exactly that size in the flesh). I've never noticed the sizes of people's watches before, but if I saw a man in a short-sleeved shirt with this strapped to his arm, I reckon it would stick out, especially if this pale, scrawny gamer stereotype holds true to the wearer. Plus, I know I have had difficulty putting on certain articles of clothing and bending my wrist backwards in certain moments with this watch attached to it. It's probably about twice as big as a reasonable-sized men's watch as far as area is concerned. The band that straps around your wrist is of equally poor fashion, also due to its large size to compensate for the size of the watch itself.
Not only is it quite unfashionable unless seen from very close, during which time it because very fashionable to game nerds, but it's also considerably heavier than any other watch I've put to my wrists. Now I haven't put a whole lot of watches to my wrists, but I know for surely this will put notably uneven strain on one of your arms, resulting in one arm with notably more muscle than the other unless you alternate wrists regularly. One of your sides might sink a little if you leave it there long enough.
So for whom would I recommend this watch? People who like Asteroids who not so vain as to fret over wrist-related fashions who wish to know the time whenever they want it.