Timex has never been a luxury brand, nor has it ever attempted to be. It has simply remained, at least since its modern debut in the 1950s, as an inexpensive and reliable option for those seeking out a watch capable of the two most basic requirements: to tell the time and not break. This is an ethos so ingrained in the brand?s history that one of its first advertising campaigns featured numerous ?torture tests? of Timex watches, as narrated by the famed news anchor John Cameron Swayze, alongside the now-iconic slogan: ?It takes a lickin? and keeps on tickin’.?

Among the first of the brand’s watches to display this ethos was the Marlin, first produced in the 1960s. Like most of Timex?s other watches, the piece?s primary purpose was to handle the shocks and exposure to water one might encounter in daily life, while maintaining the time accurately. It was priced at about $10 (a little more than $80 today, when accounting for inflation), looked clean and presentable for a variety of occasions, and could last for years without much servicing besides a daily winding of the manual-wound movement. Last fall, Timex revived this watch in one of its rare, explicitly vintage revivals, and it made a big splash in the press both for being the first mechanical watch Timex had produced since 1982 and also for its impressively low price of $200.
This new watch is, by all accounts, a faithful re-issue of the original. Housed inside a 34-mm polished steel case, the size of the w...