TIMEPIECES (2)

Mickey Mouse and his watch.

After a friend of mine read my blog post on this site about watches, he felt the need to email me with some points of interest. These he thinly veiled as questions, but were in fact his way of telling me I had “got my facts wrong” as he found himself unable to stop himself from saying later on, being unable to veil his delight with any kind of thinness at all!

To quote myself, when I was discussing my cartoon character watch, I offered the following explanation:

“These became popular some years back as a kind of joke about the
phrase “Mickey Mouse watch”. Somebody clearly thought they were
being hilarious by making a watch which actually had a picture of Mickey Mouse on it.”

I am usually big on research in the majority of things I write, but I must confess that on this particular occasion I did not think there was any need, and the reason I did not think there was any need was, rather embarrassingly, because it did not occur to me that I was wrong! Well, here I will admit - I was wrong (ouch!)! I honestly thought that the phrase ‘Mickey Mouse watch’ had come from the idea of a watch which didn’t work or was unreliable, and was related to Mickey Mouse because he was the original cartoon character and was therefore the ultimate symbol of something ‘pretend’ or not what it purported to be.

My good friend however (who I suspect was jumping up and down with glee by this point) said he was sure Mickey Mouse watches (ie, watches with Mickey Mouse on them) had been around for many many years, and followed that up with:
“Ingersoll 1933 springs to mind, just 6 years after Mickey first appeared to the world!”
Further research revealed that as it turns out, it was the Mickey Mouse watch that saved Walt Disney. Mickey Mouse was appearing in short films which Disney was renting out to small movie theaters for a small weekly charge. Disney was making so little money he was close to going out of business, when he was approached and asked if he would allow some toys and accessories to be made featuring the Mickey Mouse character. He agreed and the products were launched a short while later in a large Chicago department store. The Mickey Mouse watches (which as my trusty pedant correctly pointed out, were made by Ingersoll in 1933), sold in their thousands, and were so popular that the revenue Walt Disney collected effectively saved his business and gave him the funds to make the next film featuring Mickey Mouse. The watches continued to sell well during the 1930s and eventually provided enough money for Disney to make his first major feature film, Snow White.

So, there we have it, I stand humbly corrected and am actually grateful to (you know who you are!) for pointing this out, as because even though I like being right, I like to think I am the first to admit - and admit gallantly - when I am wrong. Further, pedantry is a personality trait which I find oddly endearing, as is the confidence to tell me I am wrong so, consider my respect for said friend significantly increased.

The story does not end there however. The next time I saw him we were talking about my blog and he said he ended up feeling very sorry for me about my lost (STOLEN!! Oh, the grief!!) beloved Gucci olive green watch, as well as my current watchless situation. He then produced from about his person a watch which he immediately admitted he had received free with a magazine subscription. I looked at it and became excited as I saw it ticked all my boxes: leather strap rather than metal, tick. Silver rather than gaudy gold surround, tick. Enough holes in the strap so that it will fit snuggly around my thin little wrists, tick. Things on the face to indicate numbers, tick (in this case roman numerals - nice)! “That’s nice.” I said.
“Well, it says ‘ladies watch’ on the box.” he said “But I don’t know any ladies, so I thought you might like it instead.”