I’m going to apologize in advance for this review. There are some who may be offended by its content in that I am discussing, in relative depth, an erotic watch of the type made popular by randy potentates in the 18th and 19th centuries along with one aspect that I find utterly vile and revolting. It is important to state that I do not condone this aspect of the watch and I find it highly offensive to boot.
The bile is rising even as I write this, friends, for this $34 watch from eBay advertises itself as a tourbillon yet is as far from a tourbillon as humanly possible. If tourbillon were the sun and this watch were a meteorite, the meteorite would be five million light years from the sun. And exploded already. And in little pieces in some distant star field. That’s how distant this is from a tourbillon.
Note: This is kind of NSFW.
A man expects a few things in life – a lollipop in his mouth, for example – and when he is thwarted so viciously by a Chinese manufacturer of erotic jewelry he finds himself at an impasse. Should he go on? Should he keep writing? I will, friends, keep writing. I am a man and that’s what men do.
First, the presentation. The watch arrived from China in a wrapped black box with a small card that said something like “Do to not wind so much this watch or it will break!” Not much in the way of instruction. The watch has a manual wind movement with two registers that both essentially tell the same thing. The register at three o’clock shows the hour in 24-hour time while the moonphase shows the approximate amount of brightness outside. If the sun is up, it’s daytime. If the moon is up it’s night. It is, for all intents and purposes, an AM/PM indicator.
But what of that finely wrote and delicately beautiful balance wheel and bridge? Certainly that piece of metal hides a tourbillon!
It does not. It’s just an exposed balance wheel. Cute if you’ve never seen a watch before but when it says Tourbillon in poorly printed lettering under the AM/PM indicator, a body comes to expect a tourbillon. There is no tourbillon here. The tourbillon is a lie.
The watch, branded AOMEI WATCH, is not unhandsome. It has a nice etched face, silver numerals, and a steel-ish case. The crown would befit a more expensive watch. But what ho! Like a mullet, this watch is business sup front and party in the back.
Picture this, friends: You’re at a classy dinner party. You sidle up to one of your tipsy drinking buddies and unstrap your watch, elbowing him gently in the ribs.
“Mr. Magundus, I do say, care for a bit of the old wobbly wobbly?” you mutter into your Pimm’s Cup.
“By jove, I do feel a palpitation that would suggest to me that my nether quarters are in need of a good jostle. Do you have something for it?”
“Why yes, dear Mr. Magundus. A lass so fine and fair that butting a goat up agin her would be an insult to the horn, if you catch my indirect meaning. It is, Mr. Magundus, a clockwork device from the Shades of the Orient.”
“Heaven forefend! Produce this item at once posthaste afore my lady wife returns from the loo!”
And so you produce… this (click to embiggen):
That’s right: little figures copulating on a field of vaguely drawn nudity. If this does not define the gilded age of science, exploration, and sport, I don’t know what does. It’s not difficult to understand what’s going on here and uploading video of it will get us banned from YouTube but you generally see what’s up. The little man is giving the little woman a good rogering.
This type of watch has a long, long tradition and many famous watchmakers created watches of this type. However, AMOEI is not a famous watchmaker. This is, sadly, a novelty.
That said, I can’t report on the quality of this watch. I wore it a few times and, given my experience with Chinese watches, this will last maybe a week before the young couple is stopped in mid-stroke. However, for $34.99 you can definitely have a bit of a chuckle.
