Daiso Military Watch, the "500 Yen Watch."
In black and green case.
Japan "dollar store" watch retails for equivalent of $4.55 USD. Quite an amazing watch for the price.
Hi. This is Alan. Thanks for reading, and for your interest in these reviews. My contact information is at the bottom. Here are two watches from Daiso Industries Co., Ltd. (株式会社大創産業). Daiso (established 1977) is a large franchise of 100-yen shops founded in Japan, with stores in 25 countries, selling a wide variety of household items, toys, cleaning products, food items, and other consumer items. Originally, all items sold at 100 yen. But starting in 2004, items priced 200, 300, 400, and 500 yen were sold. These watches were 500 yen. NEW: modification project with 3D printed dials!
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The watches seemed to have shown up in stores in Japan, around November 2019. I'm not sure if stores outside of Japan stocked them. Because of Instagram, and maybe other social medias, there was quite a bit of "viral excitement" over this release, and for while the green one in particular was hard to get hold of.
This is the first I saw of this watch, above picture from the Instagram of GiJoe867. (More pics of this and the black watch, from various Instagram users, at the bottom of this page, including some with custom modifications!
Here is my watch, the green one, right before my friend bought it from his local Daiso store in Tokyo. You can see it is the last one on the rack. Notice the very simple packaging, small plastic bag, basically.
The luminous glow on this is really pretty good, much better than I might have expected. In fact, for 500 yen, I'm not sure you should even expect the hands and dial to be luminous. This is just one feature of this "cheap watch" that is quite remarkable, for the price, and I'll go over more of these features, below.
If you are all familiar with the Original Camper watch from Timex, or of the 1964 MIL-46347 specification that this case type has descended from, you will recognize this basic format. Fixed or "solid" lug construction. The original 1964 classification was for a watch with no caseback, and the early Timex military trial watches, and the civilian Timex Camper Watches all had that format. But with the revival of the Camper Watch with Original Camper in 2015, Timex made a case with an openable back, as these were quartz watches, and needed a way to change the battery. The Diaso also has a back that opens. You can see the small "lip" lower right, where you can pry open the back.
Case is made of a plastic called ABS (link 1, link 2,) a type of "thermoplastic" material with some very interesting properties, including some that allow for easy injection-molding, and easy recycling. It remains an amorphous material, similar to glass, and does not form crystal structures. It is inexpensive, easily machined, and resists corrosion. Many consumer products are made from ABS, including LEGO bricks!
Black case version. Each has strap color roughly matching the case. The watches are 38 mm diameter, with 20 mm lugs. These measurements are 2 mm larger, compared with Original Camper.
Black stacked over the green.
Let's take a good look at the dial. No name or other words on dial, 1-12 and 13-24 layout, with lettering style, hour triangles, and hash marks very similar to the Timex Camper (both the earlier 1980s mechanical and the quartz revival). The hands, however, differ quite a bit from the Camper, but are instead very similar to the 1964 MIL-W-46374 specification. The designers of this bootleg (yes I just called it a bootleg) didn't just whip up some hodgepodge of semiotics, but paid close attention to existing watches, for their fine job of bootleggery. Dial is similar matte black.
Can I pause just a moment, and talk about 500 yen, the cost of this watch. FIVE HUNDRED YEN is less than my coffee! Here is the coffee menu at one of my coffee places at the time of this writing, February 2020, when 500 yen = 4.55 USD. My drink is the "dirty chai," and most of these drinks, except the tea, are coming in at or above the cost of the watch. YOU CAN DRINK YOUR COFFEE AND IT'S OVER IN 3 MINUTES, OR YOU COULD BUY A DAISO MILI WATCH AND HAVE IT LAST FOR ? YEARS/MONTHS?
This is kind of funny, and maybe a bit hokey. Fake "military contract info," on the back, WATCH, WRIST, GENERAL PURPOSE. Then lists the type of battery (which is helpful.) the G212 is on the back of the bag and may be product number. Not sure what is PC215. But it's all meant to look serious and military, haha.
Green and black, in plastic bag. Title of product is MILI WATCH
Above and below pics show the size differences. As mentioned the Daiso Mili has a 38 mm case, and inter-lug gap of 20 mm. The other watch shown, the Timex MIL-W-46374B has 38 and 18 mm case and lug measurements. (The comparison works also for the 1980s Camper, and the Original Camper, as they are the same size as the MIL-W...)
Above and below, some early Twitter excitement over the Diaso Mili Watch.
To keep costs low, I'm sure, no paper insert. Nothing but the watch inside the bag. All details printed on back of bag. The watch is listed as MADE IN CHINA, though the make a point to mention that the movement is made in Singapore, and furthermore that the company in Singapore is Japanese-owned!
Macro image of part of the dial. Look at the quality of the dial print, the luminous, the hands. I am not saying it's exceptional, or out of the ordinary, but it looks to me just as good as the 50-80 dollar watches. Also, I enjoy seeing the second hand line up with the hash marks. I'm not really bothered about that, and I know some people *go crazy* when the seconds hand is a bit off from the marks. And I know it's certainly random/luck that the tip is exact with the mark, but I enjoy seeing this in my 500 yen watch!
Strap seems fine. Stainless steel hardware. Consider that you'd usually pay more than $5 if you bought the strap alone!
Good look at the case and lugs.
Here is the quartz movement. Battery has "0%Hg," to indicate it is a non-mercury battery.
Note, the watches are NOT WATERPROOF.
Front, package. I think the name MILI WATCH is pretty cute. Also, note the three stylized inverted chevrons, maybe a bit like the US "Sergeant" rank (right pic).
"WE ARE A SERIOUS MILITARY WATCH. WE ARE MILI WATCH."
Once again, I bring your attention to the price of a coffee, vs the cost of this watch!
(From the menu of a coffee shop in Broookyn.)
Another pic from Instagram, someone wearing it with a green sweater and what looks like a military-style outergarment. This pic was taken by IG user _ma.aaa_ at this link.
Just a fun double exposure effect from ticking seconds hand.
Nice-looking, well-running wrist watch, at the retail price of 500 yen, less than 5 USD.
Getting anything in the post with actual stamps is such a rarity anymore, that I thought I should post a picture of the nice stamps on the packet that held the watches.
Not my pic, not my watch! I promised I'd show some pics of modifications done to these watches. This is done by IG user @ari_soft, and features a seconds hand colored red at the tip. I believe you just remove the crystal and apply the color. At first I thought people were using actual paint, but it seems like colored markers work out fine!
Here, by the same user @ari_soft, the triangle markers are colored yellow, and the hands a kind of pinkish purple! Wow!
The last modification I'll show is super impressive, was done by IG user Boots_Holic, and shows a kind of orangey color applied to the triangles and hands. Machine translation from the post says: "I painted it with a textile orange magic pen."
Back to my pics, here's one last one of the green case version of this watch.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you will like it.
Alan
Contact:
Website: Alan's Vintage Watches
Don't miss a modification project of this watch using 3D printed dials!
