Description
Some watches are precision instruments. Some watches are fashion statements. And then there are watches that are pure, unapologetic joy — and the new Timex Q Timex Space Jam 30th Anniversary Limited Edition (Ref. TW2Y79100) is squarely in the third camp. Made to celebrate three decades of the 1996 Warner Bros. film Space Jam, it puts Bugs Bunny on a cosmic-blue dial, hangs a basketball net under the crystal, turns the seconds hand into a rotating basketball, and lumes the whole thing — for USD 269 and limited to 1,000 numbered pieces.
It is, on paper, a novelty. But Timex has been on a roll with these collaborations — the Snoopy series, the Lil Wayne tie-in, the BMX-themed Easy Reader — and the brand has figured out how to put serious dial work into a USD 269 watch. The result here is genuinely charming. The 38 mm Q Timex case is a faithful tribute to the 1979 quartz original, the rotating bezel is functional, and the all-lumed dial is the kind of detail you usually pay four times this much for.
Design
The TW2Y79100 uses the now-familiar 38 mm Q Timex case in polished stainless steel, paired with a five-link bracelet finished with a vintage-style fold-over clasp. The blue rotating bezel sits over a domed acrylic crystal — and on the underside of that crystal, painted in white, is a basketball net. When you read the time, the orange basketball that serves as the seconds hand sweeps through that net, creating a perfect optical illusion of a continuous slam-dunk.
The dial itself is a deep cosmic blue with the lights of a starfield in the background. Bugs Bunny stands frozen mid-leap, basketball cocked over his head, while the Looney Tunes logo, the Space Jam emblem, and the backboard frame of the dunk all sit beneath the hands. Everything — Bugs, the basketball, the indices, the hands, the logo, even the painted backboard outlines — is filled with Super-LumiNova. Press the crown-side test button in a dark room and the whole watch glows like a Saturday-morning cartoon screen.
Specifications
- Reference: TW2Y79100
- Case size: 38 mm × 11 mm thickness
- Case material: Polished stainless steel
- Bezel: Rotating blue aluminium with elapsed-time scale
- Crystal: Domed acrylic, painted with basketball-net trompe-l'œil underneath
- Dial: Cosmic blue with fully lumed Bugs Bunny artwork, applied indices, Looney Tunes and Space Jam licensed branding
- Movement: Timex in-house quartz
- Functions: Hours, minutes, basketball seconds, date at 3
- Power reserve / battery: ~5-year Cell-Lite battery life
- Water resistance: 50 metres
- Bracelet: Five-link polished stainless steel with vintage-style fold-over clasp; sky-blue NATO included
- Price: USD 269
- Limited edition: 1,000 individually numbered pieces — live now on Timex.com
What's Exciting
The trompe-l'œil basketball-net under the crystal is the trick. It is the same kind of clever, low-cost theatre that the British indie watchmaker Studio Underd0g uses to such great effect on its USD 700 chronographs — except here it costs USD 269. Combined with the fully lumed dial art and a numbered limited run, it is the kind of value-for-money detail that earns Timex serious respect every time they do it.
It is also, simply, a fun watch. Watches do not need to be perpetual calendars to be loved, and at USD 269 the entry barrier for owning a piece of properly nostalgic, properly licensed '90s pop-culture is almost gone. For anyone who grew up watching Michael Jordan slam dunk past Marvin the Martian, this is the watch you cannot scroll past.
History
The Q Timex was originally launched in 1979 as a quartz answer to the diving watches of the day, with a thin steel case and a rotating bezel that elevated it above the cheap-plastic competition of the early quartz crisis. Timex revived the model in 2019 with a faithful reissue (Ref. TW2T80700) that became one of the best-selling watches in the brand's modern history and the spine of dozens of subsequent collaborations.
The original Space Jam film premiered on 15 November 1996, starring Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes in a hybrid live-action/animation feature that grossed over USD 230 million worldwide. The TW2Y79100 is Timex's first horological collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery — and the launch sits within a wave of Q Timex-licensed editions that has included Snoopy and Coca-Cola in recent years.
Sources
- Gear Patrol — Timex's Beloved Affordable Midcentury Watch Gets a Captivating '90s Reissue
- Hypebeast — Space Jam 30th Anniversary x Q Timex Release Info
- Timex US — TW2Y79100 product page
- Trend Hunter — Space Jam 30th Anniversary x Q Timex Watch
- Something About Rocks — Space Jam at 30: Timex x Warner Bros collab
- House of Heat — Timex Q Space Jam 30th Anniversary Watch Release Date
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