New on the Shelf: A Game Boy That Wakes You Up

The Game Boy's afterlife as a design icon is nowhere clearer than on the bedside table. This arrival is a modern one: an officially licensed alarm clock, made by Paladone, that takes the exact shape of the original Game Boy and wakes its owner the only proper way, with Super Mario Land.

An alarm clock shaped like a DMG-01 that wakes you with Super Mario Land. Perfect.

What It Is

Released in 2018, the clock is moulded to look like a DMG-01 and runs on two AA batteries, a nice nod to the console's own appetite for them. Its alarm plays original sounds from Super Mario Land, so the object is as much a piece of nostalgia as a timepiece. It belongs to a whole range of Paladone Game Boy lifestyle items that the collection holds, sitting alongside the money box, the heat-change mug, the watch and the bottle opener, a small family of homeware that turns the console into everyday decor.

Why It Joined the Collection

Modern licensed merchandise matters to the collection because it shows that the Game Boy never really became history, it became a brand people still want on their shelves decades later. The Paladone clock is a perfect small example, and it also completes a set: gathered with the other Paladone pieces, it helps document how one company has kept turning the DMG-01 silhouette into new lifestyle products. Preserving the whole family, rather than one piece of it, tells that ongoing story far better.

The Paladone Game Boy alarm clock is documented, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.