Expensive Super Mario wristwatch levels up the luxury
Got extra cash to blow on a luxury accessory with a plumber and a mushroom? Decorate your wrist with a Super Mario watch.
Your cat has a Super Mario condo and scratcher. You proposed to your spouse using Super Mario. You play retro video games by the light of your Super Mario lamp. Now it's time to hit the big leagues and open your wallet wide for a special-edition Super Mario watch from luxury watchmaker Romain Jerome.
The watch, timed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1985 release of the original Super Mario Bros. game, is an official collaboration between the watchmaker and Nintendo. Only 85 timepieces will be made, making it almost as hard to obtain as a copy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for Atari.
Mario himself makes an appearance on the watch face, which is an elaborate 3D-style dial with three levels of detail. Mario can be seen mid-leap and heading towards one of the iconic mushrooms. The pixelated design really drives home the retro-gaming look.
The Super Mario icons on the watch face are hand-painted and made from enamel, and the case is titanium. Those fancy features add up to a pretty healthy manufacturer-direct online price tag of 15,555 Swiss francs, which works out to around $15,130, £10,045 or AU$20,910.
Romain Jerome has dealers in Australia and the US, and UK residents can order watches online and pick them up in person in Switzerland. The company will help cover the cost of travel and accommodations for its European customers. Prices could vary with individual dealers throughout the world.
The sleek black look of the watch is really pretty subtle compared with most Super Mario merchandise, which tends to prominently feature the bright colors of the video game. Romain Jerome officially announced the watch on Monday, but has been teasing its unveiling on Facebook for days with pixelated photos of bricks, mushrooms and clouds.
This isn't the only gaming-themed watch on the horologist's list. The company already offers Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Tetris watches. If you have the cash and the inclination, you could collect them all.
(Via Luxury Launches)