Watches in 1990s Argos catalogues

27th November 2020

I recently found a load of 1990s Argos catalogues. I've been looking through them for hours because that's the kind of thing I do for fun.

The catalogues are brilliant. It's like being blasted in the eyes with shards of the 90s. Here are some of the pages of watches, for example:

Because I'm unemployed I'm going to discuss some of the watches in detail.

Forever Friends

Forever Friends watches are in almost every Argos catalogue of the 1990s. I'm not kidding. I've checked. There's no escaping them. You either buy a Forever Friends watch or Argos will keep coming round your house and knocking on your door until you give in.

I don't actually know anything about Forever Friends, or about having friends for that matter, so I googled it just now. I found that the first-ever Forever Friends was drawn in 1987 and the trademark Forever Friends was registered in 1989. So the bear basically came out in the 1990s and then straddled the decade, humping our wallets and our hearts to get at our sweet cash. If you want something that encapsulates the 90s, then Forever Friends is good choice.

Here's a quote from Andrew Brownsword, one of the inventors of Forever Friends:

I wanted to develop a bear that appealed to adults as well as children. [...] And this was not just a bear, it was the words inside the card, too. Until then, we had all been emotionally starved.
theguardian.com

I still am, Andrew. I still am.

Super Buys

These watches are SUPER BUYS.

I like the troll one. It has hair you can comb wherever you go. Telling the time is a secondary feature at this point. I would just buy it for the hair.

A watch with sixteen buttons

And there may be more on the sides.

The picture is too blurry to see what the buttons do but it's safe to assume there's a fax button on there somewhere. And a pager. This is the 90s after all.

Mighty Max

If I could buy this watch today, I would. There's a Mighty Max figure inside, and chained-up skeleton and what looks like a laboratory.

Okay, someone's selling them on eBay for 25 euro. I want one but not that much.

Telly Tubbies

Just think: in the 1990s, this watch could have been yours. And now you've missed the opportunity and you'll never get it back.

The watch doesn't have any hands so how were you supposed to tell the time? Maybe you were supposed to imagine the time, the same way I imagine Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Poe falling off a cliff.

I think they're looking at Tinky Winky's TV screen but maybe instead they're all examining his dick.

La La: "Is it supposed to be big like that?"

Tinky Winky: "I don't know, I was just playing with it and went like that."

Power Rangers

You could have also had this Power Rangers watch. I'm not an expert about the Power Rangers but I don't think their helmets looked like that. Why is there a great big star on his head?

Maybe he's supposed to have "Stars in his Eyes", or in this case, one star on his face. Or maybe he's supposed to be a twat.

I give this watch: one star.

Action Man

We were repeatedly told that Action Man is "the greatest hero of them all" but is he really though? Is he really better than James Bond, Batman, and Achilles? He was pretty generic if you ask me. Even his watch is boring. It doesn't even shoot lasers like James Bond's watch.

The description says the watch comes with "an emergency signal light" which makes it sound like the Bat-Signal. Which I don't think it is.

Boy Zone

At £11.79, the Boy Zone watch is one of the more expensive ones (maybe because it has hands so you can actually tell the time).

However, the hands are on top of the guy in the middle so you can't see his face. Whoops. I hope he wasn't the lead singer.

C-watch

By the end of the 1990s, watches were no longer just watches but something more. They talked and even screamed at you.

Here's "Hothead". The description says he "screams". I'm not sure why anyone would want a watch that screams at you.

Then there's this one called a Mr Tooty C-Watch. The description says he's a "lovable farty pal who can't stop passing wind". That sounds a bit better but it's still not very professional. Imagine if you were performing heart surgery and your watch kept making farting noises. It would be distracting to say the least.

I like the fact that he's my pal though. I don't have friends so it would be a welcome change to have one. Even if he's just pixels on a screen.

90s style

While the following watches didn't literally scream at you, they did scream metaphorically, and this is what they screamed: "NINETIES".

Take this one. It's the kind of watch Will Smith would have worn in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. If he had bought his watches from Argos, that is.

These watches are so 90s they hurt my eyes to look at them. They're almost like parodies of the 90s, except the decade was still in its infancy, so they were actually setting the trend instead of copying it.