Could Tag Heuer Hold the Next MoonSwatch in Its Archives?

You are probably familiar with the 20-year rule; trends re-emerge every two decades or so, like cicadas that feast on popular culture rather than sap.

Forecasters claim many inscrutable reasons for this cyclicity but it basically boils down to how long it takes to go from falling in love with something – a sneaker, a song – to being able to either create or buy those things yourself.

To wit: Gen Z is dressed like All Saints because fashion and music labels are currently helmed by 30-somethings repackaging their own ’00s influences.

The world of watches isn’t immune to this, although its cycles move slower (horology arrives later in most lives than, say, Top of the Pops. As does the tax bracket that lets you indulge in the hobby). And that perhaps explains the current interest around a certain cheap, plastic, brightly coloured ’80s icon.

No, not Swatch!

The original Tag Heuer Formula 1 landed in 1986 and was, if not quite a Swatch clone, then aimed squarely at the market it had created for fun and affordable quartz tickers.

a close up of a watch

The Formula 1 was also the first watch made after the Tag company bought the Swiss watchmaker Heuer.

As well as the new combined logo it embodied both brands’ racing bona fides (Tag sponsored the Williams F1 team; Heuer’s Monaco was immortalised on Steve McQueen’s wrist in Le Mans) albeit with a bunch of dive watch elements, including 200-metre water resistance and a unidirectional bezel.

Handy if you drove your racecar off a cliff, perhaps.

The price and styling proved a slam dunk. “It was available in six bold colours to appeal in the same way as the Swatch and became an instant hit, selling over three million units,” says Andrew Morgan, in-house watch expert at Watchfinder & Co. “It was discontinued in 2000 but was revived in 2004 as a smarter, more luxurious watch to appeal to the rising interest in premium watches.”

That iteration remains a juggernaut, despite slightly weird positioning; a four-figure quartz that’s too premium to be entry-level, but feels undercooked compared to the Rados, Orises, and Tissots that sit in the same price bracket. To watch people, it’s a lot of money for a logo. To most people, why pay extra for less accurate timekeeping?

Among watch people, most of whom have little affection for modern Formula 1, the calls for a reissue of the OG are growing. Logic is on their side, since it’s almost comically calibrated to two of Geneva’s big trends: nostalgia, via endless archive raids; and fun, which has seen even Rolex embrace blinding colours and bonkers dials (2023’s already ungettable jigsaw-and-emoji Day-Date).

And then there’s Swatch, which is yet again the most newsworthy brand in watches, courtesy of its blockbuster Omega collab and its most recent – and more interesting to watch nerds – hook-up with Blancpain. Here, then, is Tag’s chance to double-down on nostalgia by going toe-to-toe with Swatch once again.

Sadly, Geneva is an obtuse place and logic might be precisely what stops the ’80s Formula 1 from a second life.

“Swatch x Omega was so impactful because it was such a surprise,” says Chris Hall, of The Fourth Wheel watch newsletter. “If the ’80s Formula 1 comes back it will be multiples of the MoonSwatch price, but people will inevitably speak of it in similar terms, and Tag Heuer might not love the idea of following two to three years after one of its big rivals had such a moment.”

The LVMH-owned brand is also in the middle of a shift upmarket.

“It’s pricing up a lot of the watches in its collection, pursuing a more premium customer,” says Morgan. “And a plastic watch may undermine that effort.”

Expect it to resist the urge for a reissue until it absolutely can’t. By which point, it might be too late.

“It is in danger of being something that has been talked about for so long that when it eventually arrives, some of the heat may have gone out of the idea,” says Hall.

“Experience tells me that when you think the watch world is reaching the limit of any given trend, you are only halfway through. The industry has its leaders and its followers; there are brands that are probably only now just starting to think: ‘Hey, we should do something fun’.”

Until then, there’s always eBay.