Brand History: ToyWatch

La Michelle was snapped first with kids Malia and Sasha in Paris last August wearing a purple Neon Plasteramic fashion watch.

Now, it’s highly unlikely that this was intended as product endorsement, but that hardly matters. One of the great things about many relatively cheap and cheerful ToyWatches, these included, is that they are both unmistakeable and so dazzlingly bright as to be unmissable. They are ticking billboards.

It’s hard to credit that the ToyWatch has only been around since late 2005, when long-time fine watch dealer Marco Mavilla decided to create something fun for his clients and came up with an oversized plastic watch whose style mimicked that of loftier brands.

In the less than five years since, ToyWatch – described by fashion bible Women’s Wear Daily as the biggest thing since Swatch – has become, among other things, Hollywood’s favorite watch and a mass market smash. Its appeal to the movie crowd is brilliantly simple, as a spectacularly ostentatious way of declaring you are in no way the material kind.

Its appeal to the ordinary buyer is just as canny. The ToyWatch collection combines watches inspired by horological classics (compare the oversize black plasteramic with this familiar model) that you can wear with knowing irony, with watches that are just plain fun, like the Jellies with interchangeable straps and faces that were last summer’s hot accessory.

Either way, they proclaim very flatteringly that you are more about brains than bucks, and that you know exactly what you are doing by wearing that particular timepiece. The very name Plasteramic, wittily combining the plastic watch with the high-tech ceramic it mimics, speaks of a rejection of the bling generation. Marco Mavilla, meanwhile, knows he never has to pay for a product endorsement.