Swatch and The Simpsons Meet for a Watch Honoring the Long Running Series

I am an unabashed fan of Swatch. I’ve always loved Swatch watches, and as I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into the hobby over the years, my appreciation for them has only grown. They occupy a position that only a few other brands can claim, which is that they’re both an entry point into the hobby, and an arena for very serious collecting. Seriously, Swatch collecting is almost a separate category from watch collecting entirely, and requires a completely different base of knowledge, and, often, an appreciation for things that more mainstream collectors don’t often think about (like packaging, to name just one example). 

Swatch has been on something of a roll lately in my opinion, releasing a slew of watches that are genuinely interesting and visually striking, and sometimes paying homage to the brand’s early days in unexpected ways. One of my favorite pastimes around here is calling out the great things Swatch does besides the neverending collaborations with their luxury group siblings (it’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of the MoonSwatch and new Blancpain collabs), and a recent release, a collaboration of a different sort, caught my eye. Yes, Swatch has a new watch featuring classic iconography from The Simpsons, one of the most omnipresent pieces of pop culture in our lives over the last three decades. It’s a perfectly cromulent watch if there ever was one. 

The Seconds of Sweetness watch uses Homer’s famous pink donut as a motif, with ever present pastry circling the dial with a giant bite taken out of it at 12:00. I can’t help but think of the limited edition anOrdain produced by our friends at the OT podcast a few years ago, which at the time we thought might be the closest we’d get to a Homer Simpson watch. Swatch had other ideas, apparently, and has created this far more literal take on imagery from the show. 

The donut is a natural choice as an image to play with if you’re going to make an officially licensed Simpsons watch, but I can’t help but notice some inconsistencies here which make me question the physics of the world the characters inhabit on the show. It would appear that the donut on the dial is filled with the same pink frosting that it’s topped with, and as a longtime donut fan, I have to wonder what exactly is going on here. There are, of course, many filled donuts out there, but they are typically not “O” shaped. The logistics of filling a donut like this baffle me. And then there’s the strap, which naturally takes the circular nature of the donut and extends it to the wrist, which is the same shape. But if the goal was to mimic a donut, the pink frosting here would be on the outside of the hypothetical treat, and not the top. It’s an M.C. Escher-like problem that I’m surely overthinking. 

The point here, folks, is that Swatch made a Simpsons watch, and it’s colorful and fun, and if you’re a big fan of The Simpsons it’s also kind of hard to resist. This is the kind of thing that Swatch is truly great at: interpreting little (and big) pieces of culture, both pop and otherwise, and moving into the watch universe. It’s very much in the same spirit of Swatch’s ongoing series of watches inspired by significant works of art, and serves as a way to literally capture the aesthetic of something held dear by many, allowing them to own and carry a piece of that with them. 

The Seconds of Sweetness watch runs on a quartz movement and is sized at 41mm, cased in Swatch’s “bio-sourced material.” The retail price is $110, and it’s available right now on the Swatch website.