Watch I Love: Seiko 5000-7000 Mickey watch (and all Mickey watches)

Thanks to the season finale of The Good Place, I’ve been contemplating my “dream funeral”. (I blame Kristen Bell and Jameela Jamil for that.) In fact it’s less contemplation, more bizarre nightmares of dying in oddball ways. But one thing is clear: I will be wearing my Seiko 5000-7000 Walt Disney Mickey Mouse when I do.

The Seiko 5000-7000 Mickey Mouse, made for Walt Disney Productions.

Like pretty much any 70s and 80s kid, I was and still am an old-school Disney fan. Forget the weird live-action stuff they keep coming up with; classic animations were what I was into. Watching Mickey Mouse re-runs as I did my homework on school day afternoons, I became obsessed with all of the characters.

Like many of my peers in the same age group, my love for the host of character in animated shorts and films — Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, etc — never faded. Unsurprisingly, as I grew up, I found myself looking for vintage Mickey objects.

An old MIckey Mouse animation.
An old MIckey Mouse animation.

There have been plenty of watchmakers who have had Disney collaborations, the most famous being Gerald Genta’s Retro Fantasy Jumping Hours Disney editions. I honestly regret not buying them while prices were lower. But I came across a Seiko 5000-7000 Walt Disney Mickey in 2011, and fell in love with it almost instantaneously.

A Gerald Genta Retro Fantasy Jumping Hours Mickey Mouse, sold at Christie's. Image courtesy of Christie's.
A Gerald Genta Retro Fantasy Jumping Hours Mickey Mouse, sold at Christie's. Image courtesy of Christie's.

These watches were Walt Disney Productions, created in the 1970s for Walt Disney World and later further developed for Tokyo Disneyland. (Seiko also developed a Disneyland special edition for the opening of Tokyo Disneyland in 1983.) For me, what’s particularly memorable with this watch is visiting the Seiko Museum in Tokyo and chatting with the museum curator, who confessed they didn’t have one in their museum.

The Gucci Grip Mickey Mouse edition for 2020, commemorating the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Rat.
The Gucci Grip Mickey Mouse edition for 2020, commemorating the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Rat.

There are plenty of other great Mickey collab watches over the years, from the Rolex 6694 to Ingersoll’s memorable True Original in 2018, the Swatch Damien Hirst collab and most recently, the Gucci Grip Mickey this year to commemorate the Chinese zodiac calendar of the Rat. And each and every Disney fan will have his or her own preference. But for me, the 5000-7000 is something I’m taking to the grave/The Bad Place.

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