Watches

I don't know if it's a dud. The sales are obviously not going to be as high as with the Moonswatch, but without any inside knowledge, there's no way of knowing. They could certainly have met or exceeded expectations.

However, I suspect that you are at least in the right direction. They aren't heavily promoted in the stores during the most important sales period of the year. The Simpsons donut watch is all over the Swatch stores I've see , with the Blancpain collection off in the corner with the rest of the regular Swatches. They clearly aren't leading with it for Christmas, and we're only a couple of months on.

Watch YouTubers and hobbyists aren't the general public, and that's where Swatch lives.

I love my Moonswatch, I think it's great fun to wear and no it's NOT an Omega it's a Swatch. I feel the same about the 50 Fathoms Swatch. I'm planning on picking one up, again for fun. The reason for the price difference is the 50 Fathoms is an automatic movement. If you're looking for an inexpensive watch with an automatic movement that can go anywhere, the 50 Fathoms is a great option.

Even on this sub there are far fewer people posting their Swatch x Blancpain.
I think it's a combination of things: the higher price-point, Blancpain being less popular than Omega, and the watch craze is starting to die down a bit. People had lots of free time and extra cash during the pandemic years - that's been changing this past year or so.

I was in Berlin a month ago, people was still lining up outside the SWATCH store. No idea if it was for the Blancpain or MoonSwatch.

I could buy any colour the MoonSwatch in Bangkok 8 months ago.

The FF doesn't have the same hype as the Speedmaster

50 fathoms….300 ft. 😂

They look cool to me, would be a cool backup dive watch

The Speedy is a fine watch, and Moonswatch did a good job capturing the look of the real think in a plastic package. It’s an attractive watch even if it’s clearly a toy version of it.

The true Fifty Fathoms is a very distinguished watch, but the Swatch FF looks like the worst kind of plastic McDonald’s toy imaginable, while also charging you even more money.

The Moonswatch is a meme but it is an attractive meme. The FF is a hideous meme.

Good. The entire idea cheapens the brand names involved.

The watch community seems rather disdainful of both of them overall. Flawed watches for high prices is my impression of the general discontent with them.

As others have stated they are overhyped “watches” that can’t even be serviced. People paying hundreds for a disposable watch.

$400 is really high for a Swatch.

Growing up, their watches were $40-$50. And they were popular. You wore them for a year or two, and when they were too beat up, you bought another one. Anyone could buy them.

Today, they’re $80-$110.

So they drop the Moonswatch. $250 is high, but the economy was better, the watch was a novelty, many people know the Speedmaster was the first watch on the Moon. Omega has marketed the Speedy for 50+ years. Billions of billboards, bus shelters, and magazine ads. Also, the moonswatch had cool models related to our solar system. People could identify with those models.
Sold like wild fire.

$400 for a plastic Blancpain?
Who, outside of serious watch collectors, knows anything about a 50 Fathoms or any Blancpain watches? If you surveyed 50 people on the street about 50 Fathoms, 50 of them would give you a blank look.

Even the average Swatch customer, when entering the store, will google Blancpain 50 Fathoms to see what the original watch looked like and then figure out the association. And it’s still $400.

I was there on Friday and they did not have a full stock of blancpain. So they must have got a delivery recently.

Imo the color choices also make a difference. The moonswatch color choices are fun, all look amazing, and some of them tap into unique heritage like the hands on the mission to Mars. The blancpain colors on the other hand are pretty much all ugly but 2. I saw a few comments talking about how bad they looked on the leak and new right away this was a dud from the get go. Not much the price is absurd. That's actual good watch money. You could buy a quartz prx for around that, a bunch of seikos. Just a bad pricepoint for novelty. I also think the automatic movement moves it into more watch enthusiast space, where as the moonswatch had more mainstream appeal. And watch enthusiast are going to more critical of a trash automatic then a quartz watch imo

Of course it is. Nobody other than watch enthusiasts ever heard the name Blancpain before.

A quartz chrono makes so much more sense for a disposable plastic watch than a $400 automatic.

Not that many people know about the Blancpain as brand. More people probably know what a speedmaster at a glance than know what a Blancpain is. On top of all of that, the MoonSwatch/Speedmaster looks better.

The MoonSwatch was cool cause the colors made sense and actually looked good. None of the Blancpain colors look good.

Casuals don't know Blancpain, they don't care if the watch is automatic.

The moonswatch was so popular because a majority of people know Omega,being the first of the limited releases also built up hype, and people actually got to feel and see that the quality is the same as a swatch (which personally I'm not sure why people expected anything else from a $260 dollar watch)

Apart from that the colors are garish.

The price point was way too high.

To be expected. Blancpain has never been a "cool" brand. The Fifty Fathoms is ugly and dated. Sparse to a fault, like those Unimatic watches. Just my opinion, to each their own. It's also $400 plastic watch that can't be serviced. The ETA quartz movement in the Moonswatch runs on batteries and objectively has a longer theoretical service life vs a sistem51 movement.

The color selection is hideous. There's no "Mission to the Moon" option available. Imagine a black on black bezel option with the iconic yellow/red no rads indicator...but of course people would never bother buying the real thing if that were the case. The Fifty Fathoms doesn't have the same mythological pull that the Moonwatch has.

What immediately turned me off is they are not serviceable. If it breaks down...which it will...you get to toss in the garage.

Hopefully people have realised what BS marketing gimmicks both watches are. I can't imagine paying $400 for a plastic disposable watch.

End of the day it's just a Swatch. Enjoy it if you like it but I could see how the general consumer wouldn't know Blancpain versus how most will know Omega.

When I visited the Vegas Swatch store they were sold out, but had half the Moonswatch solar system. I may have picked one up if they had any 🤷🏼‍♂️

Omega has more brand goodwill than blanc

The moonswatch in itself is already a really bad value watch tbh

The blancpain is more painful pricing

People without money are not going to buy something like that and people with money are going to buy something better.

I like many others are in the financial position of "too poor to buy cheap". But these collabs aren't even that cheap all things considered. That is a very expensive Swatch, what's the point?

This is the problem with BlancPain as a whole. Good product, but massively overpriced.

I think about 1% of the population heard about blancpqin as a brand. For omega that's like 50-70 times more people. On top of that can you name me an iconic piece from blanpain that you would want a cheaper copy of? Millions want a omega moonwatch an icon for any space and watchlovwr.

In some respects I am glad.. the Moonswatch, I would imagine, sold way beyond Swatches wildest expectations and presumably they thought they had a sure fire cash cow lined up going forward. At least disappointing sales on the Blancpain collab will cause some kind of pause / reset / rethink on whether this model works on other watches.

It looks like it costs $25 to manufacture.

I’ve been casually into watches for a while and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I only heard about Blancpain this year (I’m 34 years old). I knew the Omega name before I was even a teenager. I bet if you ask 100 random people on the street 99 of them will have heard of Omega