Timex Watches

The advertising slogan it takes a licking and keeps on ticking has helped make the Timex brand world famous as a producer of reliable and stylish watches that are also very affordable. Made popular during the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties by television personality John Cameron Swayze, the innovative campaign took full advantage of television as an advertising medium adding impetus to the power of the demonstration. Viewers were treated to a host of different scenarios which tested the capabilities of the Timex during what was often billed as a torture test. The watches were strapped onto the blades of outboard boat motors, dropped into the water from heights as far as sixteen hundred feet and shown on camera to be still be running. The campaign was so successful that by the end of the nineteen fifties, Timex watches were the most popular watch brand in the United States.

With sales over one billion watches since the watches were first introduced in nineteen fifty, no other watch manufacturer has match the performance of Timex. The parent company of Timex was founded long before the first Timex was introduced, dated back to eighteen fifty four as the Waterbury Clock Company in Connecticut. The early watch market featured only pocket watches with wrist watches not becoming popular until the early nineteen hundreds. Waterbury took advantage of the popularity of the wrist watch, introducing its first wrist watch models during World War One. Under a license granted by the Disney Company, Waterbury introduced the Mickey Mouse watch in nineteen thirty three which became an instant success and is prized by collectors even today.

The Timex watch brand has survived intense competition from other watch manufacturers and remains one of the most well known, most purchased watches on the market today.