Watches have come a long way over the years. No longer restricted to such mundane functions as telling the time, which, after all, we can now do by looking at our phones, devices like Apple Watch can monitor our health, devise exercise routines, control other devices, open doors and fire lasers that cut through metal.
OK, so the latter is reserved for James Bond, but they can do a lot. But for all those supposed advances, do they allow you to make music on a miniature keyboard with real keys? No, they do not. And that feels like a regression when we consider that this 1985 Coca-Cola Music System could, apparently, do just that (if you do want a watch with today's technology, see our roundup of the best Apple Watch Series 8 prices).
I've never wanted something so much in my life. Look at this Coca Cola Keyboard Watch from 1985. pic.twitter.com/MOcoSxMKeVDecember 11, 2022
Little is remembered about the Coca-Cola Music System watch, but it's resurfaced on Twitter, with some folk saying they simply need to have one. This is a device that comes from an era when there was a wide range of novelty watches about. Personally, I had a Zeon James Bond timepiece that didn't fire lasers but did tell you what day of the week it was and produced a tinny rendition of Monty Norman's theme tune as the alarm. But this Coca-Cola Watch appears to offer a wider world of musical possibilities with a keyboard allowing you to make your own compositions.
That would have made it pretty impressive for its day. Those sound effects keychains, another retro treasure, didn't come until a good few years later, and they couldn't even tell the time. As one person notes, the Coca-Cola Music System probably sounded pretty awful, but it would have been impressive at the time.
Some people reckon the product would still be a hit with kids today, while other say they'd wear it themselves. "There's a whole forgotten era of these LED watches with little toys built in," one person replied. "They exploded out of nowhere in the mid-'80s and vanished only a few years later. Never forget the Michael Jackson 'Beat It' watch."
It seems there aren't many left around, though. CommodoreBlog, who posted about the watch on Twitter notes that it must be pretty rare, since there are none on eBay and no YouTube videos. I guess they just weren't built to last. We might have to stick to the Apple Watch after all.
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