Terrorist watch now available in chartreuse, magenta, ginger and more

I recently noticed that Casio's F91W, the de rigueur chronograph of terrorists, is now officially available in colors other than "Anarchist Night". Having ordered one myself to make sure they weren't the usual terrible knockoffs, I found it to be Casio-made and just as good as the original.

The F91W is offered in magenta, birch, ginger spice, butterscotch tempest, and, of course, cornflower blue. Personally, however, I opted for chartreuse. [Amazon]

List of Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of possessing Casio watches [Wikipedia]

• [forwardourmotto]

  Chartreuse!? That doesn’t sound like an American color you terrorist!

• [dreadpiraterobert]

  I just bought a”terrible (?) knockoff” for my 3-year-old because he likes my genuine F91W… I just want to see how long it lasts, and he really wanted the ugly red one. (Plus, the knockoff was a buck and a half…)

• [jcStrabo]

  Love the watch for everything where my normal watch (Seiko SK009J – so not really something fancy or fragile either) would be  too exposed. But now the terrorist win, with their cornflower blue terror devices!

• [chellberty]

  So how much does this terrorist watch list for?

• [Ian Wood]

  That is horrible.

  Delightful!

• [niktemadur]

  For the faaahbulous terrorist!  Or what?

  • [Ian Wood]

    Oh please. That shot right through fabulous, burst out the other side, and landed in a ditch next to Don Cherry.

• [timquinn]

  Don’t you people have phones?

  • [macegr]

    Please try the following experiment. Go someplace no one can hear you, and say to yourself “Cheap digital watch.” It’s ok…say it again. “Cheap…digital…watch.” Feel how the phrase rolls smoothly off the tongue, yet has enough sharp consonants to chew upon. It’s a simple phrase with several layers of utility and pleasure, much like the watch itself.

    • [Ambiguity]

      Advanced study: “Cheap Phone” can produce paroxysms of pleasure, too!

  • [Dlo Burns]

    When I’m at work The Phone Goes In The Locker – no exceptions. 

  • [mikedt]

     If I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it on every time I wanted to see what time it was, I’d have a frayed pocket and a worn out on/off switch – only a slight exaggeration. Also it’s harder to surreptitiously check the time using a phone. Plus, some people just like watches.

    • [Kimmo]

      You reckon many of those people who like watches are going to be all that turned on by a 20+yo yawnfest ‘spiced up’ with some different-coloured plastic? Oh, and I see from a comment below, the band’s painted. PMSL.

      If I can be bothered wearing one, I’ll take something cool, thanks – like an Accutron or at least a Swatch Skin or something.

      • [Daneel]

         I love watches. My day-to-day one is a Laco Flieger B.  I really want to get a Panerai, when I can justify the cost  it. I don’t care if I don’t really ‘need’ a watch, a well made one is a beautiful thing.

        However, I also own a Casio F91W. It’s an iconic watch.  I think you’d be surprised how popular they are with people who like watches.

        • [Kimmo]

          Well, it’s certainly an icon, no doubt… particularly since the terrist connection.

          But there’s nothing intrinsically interesting about it in the same way an icon like say, the VW Beetle is, beyond how long it’s remained unchanged, AFAIK. IIRC, we had plenty of cheap digital watches with identical functions before ’91, too.

          It doesn’t have an escapement-powered movement that hums like an Accutron, it’s not super-slim like a Skin, or possess the merest fraction of the style or cachet of your Laco or the Panerai.

          For mine, Casio’s caculator and Data Bank models are way cooler.

          Although I can certainly see how the F91W would be a no-brainer inclusion in any serious watch collection.

  • [Graham Freeman]

    You’d look rather silly having a phone tied to your wrist.

    • [surreality]

       Judging by the comments section re: that guy who implanted magnets into his arm so he could put his i-whatever there, you’re right.

    • [Kimmo]

       Like this monstrosity?

  • [bkad]

    Agreed that watch wearing is WAY down these days, and probably gone as a style item outside of certain circles. I wear one because that’s my preference (faster to check than a phone and easier to check surreptitiously, not banned from my workplace/theaters/etc., much more reliable (my phone is likely to be in the wrong room or have dead battery).  I used to have a strong opinions on this issue but now I don’t care what other people do. Also, I know my situation (all consumer electronics banned from workplace, where I most need to know the time to the nearest few minutes) is unusual.

  • [howaboutthisdangit]

    Good luck fishing that phone out of your pocket when your hands are full, or dirty, or on the charger.

• [Keith Tyler]

  Pic or it didn’t happen! All the product shots look like shoops of the same two-tone image, with the non-black color spun around the HSV wheel.

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    Will do in the AM

• [borzoj]

  yeah, I have one of those, unfortunately the strap is made of black rubber which is painted to the colour of the watch and it only takes few months for the paint to start wearing off and then the whole thing looks quite horrbile. probs not the most important suicide bombers, but if you buy it for long term use, it kind of sucks

  • [Dlo Burns]

    Is the strap changeable? (ie does it have pins?)

    • [ffabian]

      Yes

    • [Kimmo]

      Odds are even a replacement band will double the price of the watch.

      Triple, if you don’t fit it yourself…

• [Jake0748]

  Christ, whatta piece of crap. 

  • [Ambiguity]

    Therein lies its true beauty.

• [Martijn]

  Ginger spice? Really? What if I prefer Sporty?

  • [Halloween_Jack]

     When I read that the watch was in Ginger Spice, I expected a dirtier picture.

• [Annika Kremer]

  I’m thinking about getting one of those for the purposes when I don’t want to wear my “good” watch. Still prefer “Anarchist Night” though… I’m more of an old-fashioned terrorist apparently.

• [Marcus Dale]

  I see queues of people that will disagree with a color, besides the name terrorist.

• [pizzicato]

  For those hipster whom cannot get enough color combination for their outfit, eBay has stock plenty selection. 

  Alas this is so last year, competing with johnny come lately, who can compare with the original scruffy hand me down.  

• [Moriarty]

  Wait, knockoffs of Casio watches exist?

  • [Rob Beschizza]

    In abundance. Casio makes reliable, high-quality products and sells them for $15, a price anyone can afford. But it costs pennies to make a knockoff, which can be sold on the street for a couple of dollars.

    You’ve always been able to buy colorful Terrorist Watches, but when I say terrible knockoffs, I mean it: they literally do not keep time.

    • [Halloween_Jack]

       I bought one of those once; it was better looking than any watch I’d owned up to that point, but lost time over the course of a day. I wondered if that had to be done deliberately, since I’d imagine an accurate timekeeping circuit has to be pretty cheap.

    • [Kimmo]

      Interesting that something so straightforward as a quartz-timed circuit can be so totally arsed up… I guess such crap is made to be sold, not used.

      Makes perfect sense if you’re using someone else’s brand name…

      • [Keith Tyler]

        The Casio Waveceptors keep horrible time, on their own. Why bother with accuracy, they must figure, when it will re-set its clock via WWV overnight?

        Except when it doesn’t.

    • [bkad]

      Casio makes some really nice ‘high end’ digital watches, in the $50-$200 depending on how much you pay for style vs technology, which include solar recharging, atomic clock broadcast synchronization, water proofing, etc… the ones that are ‘style’ items with the segment of urban culture which likes such things can sell for hundreds of dollars if purchased legitimately, so there’s an even bigger market for makes of those models.

      • [TheMadLibrarian]

         DH likes the old-school digital Casios that have the built in calculator and Indiglo.  What can we say, our nerd, let us show it to U.

• [ffabian]

  I bought one of the black ones after reading the BB article last year. It’s my “work” watch. Durable, easy to read, water resistant/proof and best of all: cheap. 

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  Beware.  I bought nine of them off of ebay, three each in blue, white and red so I could remix the heads and straps into red/white/blue terrorist watches.  Of the batch only 2 keep time to within 2 minutes a day and the rest are useless as watches.  Make sure you’re getting real Casio product when you buy and that the timekeeping is guaranteed.  The real thing keeps time to about 2 sec/month.

• [Ambiguity]

  Slightly OT but interesting none-the-less. Go to a bunch of people and ask them what color chartreuse is. A surprisingly high number of them will say “a shade of red.” (Experiment conducted in English-speaking US.)

  I’ve never been able to figure it out, but the experiment seems highly replicable. My only guess is that a) a lot of people don’t drink liqueur and b) the superficial resemblance to “crimson” (starting with same letter and same number of syllables?)

  • [Dlo Burns]

    I think that it might be that most (English speeking) people vaguely know that it’s some kind of booze, and it sounds French, so it must be a type of wine.

    • [Ambiguity]

      That’s a reasonable conceptual model. More elegant than mine.

  • [IronEdithKidd]

    For some reason, people who do a lot of sport fishing always seem to know what color chartreuse is. 

    • [OtherMichael]

       The beer-drinking is just an act.

      Once they’re alone in a boat, out come the absinthe spoons.

      • [Aaron Gilliland]

        And then… Cradle of Filth… on cassette.

  • [bkad]

    “Vermilion” is also confusing. It really sounds like it should be green, based on English words like ‘verdant’, and of course the Spanish/French/etc. words for green. But it isn’t Ver- as in green, but Vermi- as in “worms and bugs”. Which are crushed to make red dye.

    • [Ambiguity]

      If I hadn’t spent a stint trying my hand at fine-art painting, I absolutely would have through it to be a green, owing to the verdant connection!

• [edthehippie]

  and , i am still sparticus !! although , now , i may spray paint my wrist !?!?

• [CSBD]

  Im sure these watches will be fun to have until they get you renditioned.

• [Adam Burley]

  After the first “Casio watches ID terrorists” set of blog posts bounced around the -sphere, I ordered one online.  Frankly, the articles were a testimonial to the ruggedness and ease-of-use for the watch.

  I love mine!  It’s small, simple, stylish in a retro-80s way, and well-neigh indestructable.

  As a bonus, it has yet to blow up or exhort me to extremism.  Well, I became slightly more Amish, but I’m sure it’s just a side-effect. 

  • [OtherMichael]

     ”I became slightly more Amish”
    ….
    below-the-chin beard? suspenders? nifty hat?

    (larger image @ http://www.pbase.com/alan_burt/image/101211867/original )

  • [Kimmo]

    I believe the term is ‘well-nigh’.

  • [bkad]

    I completely missed this news story before now.  I wear a casio digital watch too. I got it for hiking/backpacking/swimming/doing-anything, because they are so durable, but like it enough I wear it everywhere except at work (where a digital watch would be like wearing white socks with brown shoes).

• [dross1260]

   Orange Classic will go great with turntable of terrorist

• [GregS]

  I had one of those Casio F91W watches, long before terrorists made them so fashionable. Bought it back in the ’90s. I remember being surprised to see that Osama bin Laden had the same watch as I did. That watch was indestructible.  I wore out two or three watch bands on it, and eventually all the buttons quit working, but the strapless, buttonless remnant still kept going. And last time I looked, a few months ago, the damned thing was still running, keeping accurate time. 

  • [Ian Wood]

     REVENANT WATCH

• [howaboutthisdangit]

  I worry that my F-105, an F91W sibling which bears a striking resemblance, probably put me on some double-secret watchlist long ago and even now the Man (or several Mans) are following me everywhere.  The last thing I want is to make the watch even more obvious.

  Although… this may be an interesting experiment for the airport.  I wonder if TSA screeners are on the lookout for the F91W.

• [cubby96]

  Amazon was sold out in chartreuse and light blue so I Google searched for a somewhat reputable seller and found one selling through NewEgg.  NewEgg won’t authorize a shipment to a PO Box, and won’t allow a non-confirmed address through PayPal.  I wanted to be the cool kid with a terrorist watch in a bright color like Rob, but if it’s this hard, forget it.  I guess I get to keep my $18.99 to spend on something else.

• [penguinchris]

  In case anyone’s wondering… brightly colored watches on men get a lot of comments/compliments from women. I wore the purple one shown below most of last summer in California and the ladies loved it though it does look a little silly to me now (I bought it for $10… it appears to still be running accurately! I have a backup too since it was so inexpensive).

  The second one is my “terrorist style” watch, the Ambassador, bought at a flea market. It sort of worked at the time but the buttons to adjust the time didn’t. I just think it looks cool – it’s got a colonial Hong Kong (where it’s from) cheap electronics vibe.

  I like the idea of the Casio but I don’t really like the style. It’s retro but not great design aesthetically. It’s similar to the kinds of watches I wore in middle school. I guess my main issue with it is all the lettering on the face. The hallmark of the watches I wore as a kid were all the features – which aren’t particularly impressive, let’s be honest – written all over the watch. Not at all elegant. I also prefer analog to digital watches for this reason.

  The current cool cheap watch is the Timex Weekender with nylon straps. You can get nylon straps in lots of different bright colors. Unfortunately in order to get the color combination you want (watch face and strap) you might have to purchase multiple watches because they don’t sell everything separately or in all combinations. You can get the watch at Target though for $35, and they sell separate nylon bands but not in all the colors which is annoying (I’d have to buy multiple watches to get the bands I’d want).

  • [Kimmo]

    Huh, that Ambassador is so nasty it’s almost kinda cool.

• [pjcamp]

  I had no idea I was a 13 year old terrorist.

  Well, ok, maybe my teacher was aware of that.