Today I Learned: Oakley Made Dystopian-Looking Luxury Mechanical Watches

Oakley in the late 90s and early 2000s was all about being unapologetically unhinged when it came to designing their sunglasses, with their era-defining "Overthetops" that looked like they came from the closet of a video villain from a Nintendo 64 video game.

A radically and literally hingeless pair of sunglasses that wrapped on top of a person's skull broke the fashion world when they were used in the 2000 Olympics by sprinter Ato Boldon. Since then, the Overthetops have become a highly coveted piece of fashion history and a highly collectible item among style scavengers.

You are likely also unaware of the fact that the American sportswear brand also tried their hand at the horology space with a $1,500 luxury watch powered by a rather peculiar Seiko movement.

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The Oakley Timebomb looked as loco as it sounds, a grenade-like wristwatch constructed with a biomorphic titanium case for a truly "What the f*ck is that?" reaction every time without fail.

It was a disruptive piece in the watch world during a time when people were getting back into mechanical watches after the domination of digital quartz pieces from the 1970s to the late 1980s.

But Brian Takumi (Oakley vice president) and the folks at the company that had Michael Jordan as a board member hinged their bets on a titanium/carbon fiber clamshell-esque watch that looked like peak Y2K-style sensibilities.

The aforementioned Seiko movement was called the "Inertial Generator" and can hold a charge for up to two weeks, marketed to bridge the precision of quartz and the ease of an automatic movement.

And yes, $1,500 is an absurd amount of money to shell out on a weird-looking piece that people are more likely than not going to confuse with other fashion brand pieces.

Oakley quietly made a follow-up via the Tiembomb II, which was even more expensive. and an undisclosed Swiss-made movement. The sequel went for a whopping $2,750.

While diehard horology enthusiasts and watch nerds scoffed at the sci-fi wristwatch too weird for the conservative customers pedantic about their complications, the Timebomb has its place in the annals of watchmaking and fashion history. It deserves to be mentioned among the zeitgeist of early 90s subcultures and Y2K subversion.

Shortly after the brand's acquisition by Luxottica in 2011, Oakley made a few other luxury watches, such as a tie-up with Lance Armstrong and a $9,000 dollar "Full Metal Jacket" that turned into a pocket watch.

The brand then quietly wrapped up their watchmaking efforts as Takumi cited a dearth of desire to keep churning out $2,000 watches.

Today, the Timebomb has been consistently making rounds on retro moodboards, Instagram fashion reels, and TikTok fashion vlogs for niche fashion pieces you should scavenge for in thrift shops.

Will we ever see a refresh of these watches that could pass for Spy Kids gizmos? We just might if the nostalgia-hungry opinion leaders online continue to obsess over the era of delegated technology.

A close up of the Timebomb

The caseback of the Timebomb

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