G-SHOCK
By Adam Craniotes
GA-735A-1A JR
GA-835A-1A JR DR
Happy Anniversary &
100 MILLION good wishes
G
-Shock celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, and tion, dropped a mechanical watch that was a treasured gift from
in that time it has achieved the sort of iconic status his parents, and, naturally, the watch smashed into a million pieces.
that one might accord to Xerox or Levi’s. Indeed, when Heartbroken over his loss, he set about creating an “unbreakable”
describing a tough watch, “G-Shock” is bandied about as a noun, watch. Needless to say, this was easier said than done. In fact,
never mind that the watch in question might be from another brand. it would take a lot of convincing on his part just to get permission
But, it almost never happened. from upper management to take on the project. Ultimately they ac-
It’s hard to believe that the juggernaut that is G-Shock to- quiesced, but only on the dual conditions that it be done after-hours
day, with over 100 million watches sold the world over, owes its
existence to a single, broken watch from almost four decades past,
and that no currently running projects be affected.
Ibe set to work with a hand picked team, and the rest is his-
and yet that is exactly how it came about. Indeed, the story behind tory. In the end, it would take two years and over 200 prototypes
the creation of the first G-Shock is almost as famous as the man before the the project bore fruit, but throughout the process Ibe’s
who created it. Kikuo Ibe, then a young engineer at Casio Corpora- mantra “Never Give Up” held true. And so it was that in 1983, the
48 | AboutTime Magazine