Seiko Brings The Fan-Favorite Green Back To The Alpinist GMT; Vulcain Reimagines The Cricket In Titanium; More Spinnaker SpongeBobs; A Wonderful Angelus Monopusher; Chopard Teams Up With Revolution

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Not much from me today, I’ll just wish you a good weekend.

In this issue

• Seiko Brings The Fan-Favorite Green Back To The Alpinist GMT

• Vulcain Reimagines The Legendary Cricket In A Titanium Case With A Sensational Dial

• Spinnaker Lets DoodleBob, SpongeBob's Malformed Pencil-Drawn Doppelganger, Loose Across Three Dials

• Angelus Gives Us Three Measurement Scales In One Glorious Monopusher

• Chopard Revisits The Quattro With Revolution Media For A 9-Day, Doré-Dialed Re-Edition

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Brings The Fan-Favorite Green Back To The Alpinist GMT

The Alpinist GMT has existed since 2023, but it's spent its whole life wearing the wrong colors. The blue SPB377 and black SPB379 were fine, the hornbill-inspired SPB493 was a nice curiosity, but none of them gave you the thing people actually wanted from the Alpinist: that emerald green dial with gilt accents, the look that turned the SARB017 and SPB121 into cult watches. The new HBC007 finally fixes that.

The case is unchanged from its GMT siblings, which is no complaint. Stainless steel with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, 39.5mm wide, 13.6mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46.4mm. A sapphire crystal sits over the dial, a fixed 24-hour bezel rings the case, and there are two fluted crowns, the lower one at 4 o'clock driving the internal rotating compass bezel. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is the entire point. That rich green surface carries gilt applied hour markers, gilt cathedral hands, and gilt minute track detailing, the warm vintage combination Alpinist fans have been asking the GMT line to deliver since day one. A central red GMT hand tracks your second time zone and the date sits at 4:30.

Inside is the automatic caliber 6R54, the same movement running the rest of the Alpinist GMT collection. It carries 24 jewels, beats at 3Hz, and offers 72 hours of power reserve, with an independently adjustable GMT hand. Seiko pairs it with a new dark brown leather strap certified by the Leather Working Group.

The Seiko Alpinist GMT HBC007 joins the permanent lineup, going on sale in July 2026. Price will be around $1,490. See more on the Seiko website.

2/

Vulcain Reimagines The Legendary Cricket In A Titanium Case With A Sensational Dial

Vulcain has been making the Cricket alarm since 1947. Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon all wore one, which is why it picked up the nickname "The Presidents' Watch." The brand has spent nearly 80 years building movements around that distinctive chirping alarm, and I’ve always wanted one. However, it’s this very limited edition that just might be the ultimate version of the Cricket, one that’s hyper modern while keeping its heritage alive.

The case is 39mm wide, made out of grade 5 titanium, with a titanium bezel and a sapphire caseback. Through that caseback you can see the alarm anvil and Vulcain "V" — both titanium as well. Titanium is also very well known in the watch world as a good resonator in minute repeaters, so it works great for the alarm function.

The dial is grey titanium with a guilloché effect, nickel-plated indices and white printed text. It’s incredibly cool and looks like it’s moving a million miles per hour. Blued hour and minute hands sit against it, the seconds hand is black, and the alarm hand is nickel-plated with a black arrow tip.

Inside is the new calibre V14, hand-wound, assembled at Le Locle, running at a slow 2.5Hz with 52 hours of reserve. Two independent barrels split the work, one for timekeeping and one to power the roughly 20-second alarm. The interesting part is acoustic: titanium changes how the Cricket sounds, softening the traditionally shrill chirp into something lighter and more refined. The bridges get Côtes de Genève, the screws are blued, and the train bridge is engraved "Titane." It comes on a black calfskin strap with a quick-change system.

The Vulcain Cricket Titanium is limited to 100 pieces, priced at €6,760. See more on the Vulcain website.

3/

Spinnaker Lets DoodleBob, SpongeBob's Malformed Pencil-Drawn Doppelganger, Loose Across Three Dials

Spinnaker has done the licensed-cartoon watch before, and done it well. Their first SpongeBob run a few years back sold out instantly. That repeated itself a couple of more times since. This time the villain gets the spotlight. DoodleBob, for the uninitiated, is SpongeBob's malformed pencil-drawn doppelganger who terrorizes Bikini Bottom until he's trapped inside a book, and he now causes the same mischief across three watches in this capsule collection.

The trio shares a theme but spreads it across three cases. The Hull California runs 42mm wide and 14.4mm thick in a cushion-shaped steel case with a screw-down crown and 100 meters of water resistance. The Croft Mid-Size is the tidiest of the three at 40mm wide, 14.15mm thick, steel, screw-down crown, rated to 150 meters. The Fleuss is the largest at 43mm wide but the thinnest at 13.2mm, also steel, also 150 meters. None of them are doing anything clever in their construction, and they don't need to. The case is just a delivery system for the dial, and on that front Spinnaker has been generous.

The Hull's "Patty Parade" uses a California layout, Roman numerals up top, Arabic down below, split by bar markers at 3 and 9, all rendered in the deliberately wonky SpongeBob typeface. DoodleBob sits at 6 o'clock with his magic pencil, ringed by a pile of Krabby Patties that all glow in the dark. The Croft's "Minute Sketch" swaps the minute hand for the magic pencil and stamps "Me Hoy Minoy" at 12, the garbled line DoodleBob blurts before he learns to say his own name. The Fleuss "Ripped Reality" is an open-heart dial where DoodleBob has torn through the surface to expose the movement, and the burst-paper effect around the aperture is very well done. Another cool detail: six watches per variant hide UV-activated graffiti lume, a lucky-ticket for whoever lands one.

The two smaller watches have the Miyota calibre 8215, a 3 Hz automatic with a 42-hour power reserve and a date, and the Croft puts a DoodleBob illustration on the rotor. The Fleuss instead uses the Seiko calibre NH70, the open-heart variant beating at 3 Hz with a 41-hour reserve, which along with the skeletonized dial and the two-tone black-and-lumed-white 60-minute bezel makes it the priciest of the three. All three ship on a steel bracelet with an extra silicone strap in the box.

The Hull California (ref. SP-5174-11) is priced at $425, limited to 500 pieces. The Croft Mid-Size (ref. SP-5176-11) is also $425, limited to 600. The Fleuss (ref. SP-5175-11) is priced at $525, limited to 600. See all three on the Spinnaker website.

4/

Angelus Gives Us Three Measurement Scales In One Glorious Monopusher

Angelus spent the last three years working through its own back catalogue one instrument at a time: the Chronographe Médical in 2023, the Instrument de Vitesse in 2024, the Chronographe Télémètre in 2025. Each pulled a single function from the brand's chronograph history and built a watch around it. The Instrument de Mesures stops splitting them up and puts the telemeter, pulsometer, and tachymeter on one dial. It's the logical end of the series, and also, perhaps, the best of the bunch.

The stainless steel case is 39mm wide and 9.25mm thick, with twisted lugs, a thin polished bezel, and a box sapphire crystal on top. A sapphire caseback shows off the movement. Those proportions are quite something. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is not great.

Four scales on one dial should be a mess, but Angelus is well known for perfect scale integrations. They keep things in check here with a color coded approach. There are two base colors available, black and ivory. The black is paired with blue, orange, and cream; the ivory version with blue, red, and green scales. The telemeter sits on the outer edge for measuring distance by sound delay, the minutes track and a 15-beat pulsometer come next, and a spiral tachymeter for 20 to 500 km/h speeds toward the center. The dial is built in levels, a domed center, a sloped middle, a raised outer ring, with the markings laser-cut into the structure so each function physically steps away from its neighbour. Syringe hands are filled with Super-LumiNova, and the central seconds hand reads keeps things simple.

Inside is the in-house calibre A5000, the manually wound monopusher already used across the Instrument series. It beats at 3Hz with 42 hours of reserve, built around a column wheel and horizontal clutch. Through the caseback you get 3N gold finishing against palladium-treated chronograph parts, a deliberate contrast that makes the chronograph works easy to pick out, along with circular graining, Côtes de Genève, and polished bevels. The watch comes on calfskin, black for the ebony dial or tobacco brown for the ivory, with a steel pin buckle.

The new Angelus Instrument de Mesures is limited to 25 pieces per colorway, priced at CHF 18,400 including VAT. See more on the Angelus website.

5/

Chopard Revisits The Quattro With Revolution Media For A 9-Day, Doré-Dialed Re-Edition

Chopard has been winning over the collectors I known and trust, slowly and without much noise. The dateless L.U.C 1860 with the salmon dial in 2023 was the moment a lot of people started paying more attention to what the brand is doing. At the time, Chopard teamed up with Revolution, the legendary magazine, to create two very cool takes on the watch, one in untreated 3N yellow gold and a Lucent Steel case, with dials supplied by Metalem, the same outfit that makes them for Philippe Dufour's Simplicity. That idea is back now, applied to the Quattro, 26 years after the original arrived with its 9-day power reserve.

The case measures 38mm by 9.54mm thick, which is truly compact for a watch carrying four mainspring barrels. Chopard's own recycled alloy, returns for the case. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is all it needs.

The dial is pretty sensational. It’s pure untreated 3N yellow gold, made in-house this time rather than by Metalem, with hand-guilloché radiating from the central post and a filet-sautant ring framing it. Kite-shaped applied markers get a faceted mirror-polished finish, and the dauphine hands are high-polished.

Inside is the calibre 98.01-L, manually wound, running at 4Hz with that 216-hour power reserve from four large barrels arranged in two stacks of two, all visible through the caseback. There's a power reserve indicator at 12, small seconds, and a date at 6. It comes on a leather strap with a pin buckle.

The Chopard L.U.C Quattro Revolution Re-Edition is limited to 20 numbered pieces at CHF 32,500, sold through Revolution's shop.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Todd Kliman’s son Theo loves cooking—not that much of a surprise when your father’s an acclaimed food critic and writer. Todd Kliman’s son Theo had never been to New Orleans. So Todd Kliman took Theo for his first plane ride, his first culinary pilgrimage, and his first blush of what a life of eating really looks like. If you see Theo’s name in a decade or two attached to the word “chef,” you’ll think back to this piece and realize: yup, this is how passions are born. A remarkable piece about family, food, and finding one’s way.

• Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s audacious, format-breaking 1938 play, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and remains a dark, daring cultural touchstone. (It plays a prominent part in Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake and Jon Mooallem’s This is Chance!, among others.) The Emporium, Wilder’s daring follow-up, ultimately escaped his grasp. Decades after Wilder shelved it, Kirk Lynn, another playwright, surfaced the pieces of Wilder’s abandoned masterpiece and, in a task worthy of a Wilder play (or a Charlie Kaufman script), sets himself to completing The Emporium.

• A small change in the human world can be catastrophic in the animal kingdom: the introduction of a new NSAID drug destroyed India’s vulture population after it entered their food chain and caused kidney failure in the birds. In turn, the destruction of just one species proved fatal right back—with no vultures to compete with them, scavenging street dogs have exploded in number, bringing a rise in rabies cases in humans. A study of how easily the intricate ecology of a city can be unraveled.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I had no idea Sorkin was working on a sort of sequel to the Social Network, which he’s directing, but this looks pretty good.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk