Fresh Find: The Game Boy Watch Boy

Our second fresh find keeps the theme of objects that wear the Game Boy's shape without ever running a game. Last time it was a pair of walkie talkies. This time it is something you strap to your wrist: the Watch Boy, a licensed LCD watch that turns Nintendo's handheld into a timepiece.

What It Is

The Watch Boy, model number GBE-002, is a digital LCD wristwatch made in 1995 by Mani Industries of Hong Kong, styled as a miniature Game Boy complete with a tiny screen and a directional pad printed on its face. Despite the toy-like looks it is a proper little watch: it shows the month, date and day of the week, runs in either 12 or 24 hour mode, has an alarm, and includes a six-digit chronograph stopwatch, all driven by the A and B buttons and powered by a single SR41 silver-oxide cell. It was sold in six colours and carried the International Nintendo licensed-product seal, with “Watch Boy” registered as a Nintendo trademark and licensed to Mani.

A Game Boy small enough to strap to your wrist, no cartridges required.

Why It Was Added

A watch that cannot play a game raises the same fair question as the walkie talkies before it, and the answer is the same. The Watch Boy documents how completely the Game Boy had become a shape rather than just a machine. By the mid nineties the grey silhouette was recognisable enough to sell an ordinary quartz watch, and Mani built a whole family of these gadgets around it.

That family is part of why this one matters. It joins the Time Boy clock, the Calculator Boy and the Walkie Talkie Boy already in the collection, each taking a mundane everyday object and giving it the Game Boy's face. Seen together they map the console's cultural reach far better than any single cartridge could. Novelties like this were cheap, worn and easily broken, so a complete example still sealed on its card is a good deal scarcer than it looks.

A Sibling That Actually Played

Here is the twist. Mani did not stop at telling the time. The same range included the Gamewatch Boy, a near-identical wrist unit that really did play a small LCD game, Super Mario Race in 1992 and a Dr. Mario edition in 1993, each with a beginner and an expert setting. The six-colour run advertised as “Six New Colors” on this very card is the 1995 edition of the line. So while the Watch Boy only ever keeps time, its close cousin genuinely put a playable Mario on your wrist.

This particular example also travelled a long way to get here, making the trip all the way from Australia before joining the collection in Switzerland. You can find the Watch Boy alongside its siblings in the collection, where it will be fully catalogued with photographs shortly.