In the pantheon of watch media, from our own magazine to all those films with golfers and race car drivers that clog up your TikTok feed, one of the most influential – and unappreciated – used to drop onto your doormat free, unannounced, and plump with possibility.
When, in 2020, the Argos catalogue was sent to the great compost bin in the sky, after 47 years and more than a billion copies printed, a generation of kids lost a gateway to the world of watches. Lost the chance to circle the Sekondas and Citizens they wanted for Christmas. To ponder whether they could drop a G-Shock off the school roof without it breaking. To picture the joys possible if they were sporting a Casio CMD-40, with its inbuilt TV remote, the next time their chemistry teacher tried to make them watch a video about covalent bonds.
Kids like watches. They find them fascinating. Toddlers will demand you put yours on their arm. Six-year-olds can spend an afternoon timing stuff. And nine-year-olds love to learn how they work, to fiddle with pushers and spin bezels. Or, as I once did, to leave their dad's glow-in-the-dark Swatch perched on a lightbulb in an effort to really juice the Super-LumiNova, only to melt its face onto the lamp.
These are the things that tend to matter to kids: functions, and not in the tourbillon sense. Because to a child, a watch is a functional thing. They don't have a clock glued 12 inches from their face all day, nor do they feel time passing like those of us whose lives are measured out in Zoom calls, and the brief gaps between Zoom calls. To a seven-year-old, a half-hour lasts either seconds or hours depending on whether it's when they have to come in for tea, or how long they're stuck in the car before they get to grandma's house.
This was the founding idea of Blok Watches, a kid-focused brand with a decidedly non-kidlike-focus on craft that you definitely won't find in the Argos catalogue. Even the new, digital one.
Founded by industrial designer Neil Ferrier – whose Discommon agency tackles head-scratching, very NDAed product development challenges for huge brands – alongside ex-JP Morganer James Walker, Blok's USP is a rotating bezel marked with five, 10, 15 and 30-minute intervals. Tell your little one to be downstairs, teeth brushed, in five minutes, and they can just spin the marker to the big hand and know exactly when they're needed. Over time, they learn how it passes.
"I suffer terribly from ADHD and a Blok would have given me so much safety growing up – having control of time passing," says Ferrier. "My relationship with time was hard. I was an only child and often found myself living in a make-believe world. I think my ability to dream and pretend has probably fuelled my ability as the owner of a design firm now."
Blok is design-first, in a way most kids' watches aren't. Things like the offset numerals, so it's easier to understand that the space between each marker makes up each hour. Or the crown that's flipped to the left side, which makes it less obtrusive when you've got bendy, tree-climbing hands, and harder for inquisitive fingers to play with (because even clever minute-markers won't fix a watch that's set wrong).
"One of the issues with existing kids watches is that they treat kids like, well, kids," says Walker. "Bubblegum and fairies and superheroes. Now, that’s certainly fine but it doesn’t work for everyone, or at least we think it doesn’t have to. Kids are observant and far, far more discerning than they’re often given credit for."
Outside is backed up inside. These are Swiss-made watches, with ETA quartz movements and serviceable monocoque cases that give them 100m water resistance. They're expensive, but kid-proof. They're made for big kids to eventually pass down to their siblings. And for grown-up kids to wear too. "Fun and mischief transcends all ages," says Ferrier, "which is evident by the amount of adults that actually purchase to wear themselves."
Perhaps because, at $179 (£144) each, they're certainly adult-priced. It's especially punchy considering how easily kids leave their possessions on bus seats or in swimming pool lockers. But Blok's counter is that, by building them bomb-proof, there's no reason to take it off. Just strap it on and leave it there. "A parent might appreciate the quality inherent in a shock-proof movement and 100 metres of water resistance," says Walker. "A kid will dig the fact that they can go swimming and play baseball with their watch."
Cynics might say that, as well as teaching how to tell time, Blok leads into the wallet-draining world of haute horlogerie, a first step down the slippery slope of Rolex waitlists and timepieces locked in safes. Maybe kids like Iron Man watches, and it's dad who wants his offspring to wear something that complements the Royal Oak on his own wrist.
Cara Barrett is acutely aware of how early infection can bloom into a lifelong susceptibility. The former Hodinkee editor is the founder of Parchie, which makes more affordable but no less slick kids' watches, with a hint of Aquaracer here, a touch of Submariner there. "My first watch was a Flik Flak but the one I remember the most is a Swatch, with bacon and eggs on the dial," Barrett says. "My affinity for watches obviously grew from there into a more mature appreciation and understanding, but it all started with Swatch – a brand known for being fun."
That joyfulness has inspired her watch collecting and, as of 2021, her watch designing. But the bright colours and fun textures are a teaching tool as well; bi-coloured hands correspond to hours (on the bezel) and minutes (on the outside of the dial, so you can learn that '11' equates to '55') and velcro straps are switchable and easy to use. "I want our watches to have a design language that speaks to both parents and kids," she says.
Perhaps that's about parents wanting to instil an appreciation of proper design early – or, rather, wanting their kids to embody their own appreciation of proper design – but Parchie and Blok also recognise that, despite watch companies talking down to kids, what little people often want most is the big-people thing, sized for them. "My son in particular had a fascination with my watch collection and really could grasp that they were serious tools," says Ferrier. "He knows the space watch, the racing watch, the divers watch and takes real joy in explaining them. He wanted his own grown-up watch." Now his father has his own kids' watch, too.
