Seiko AirPro A861 - Oh! Ya? 99SS Astro Boy Limited Edition

The problem with collecting watches from the 70s and onwards is that the materials used degrade over time.

The Seiko AirPro watches are one that have suffered so need to be handled with kid gloves.

Three variations of AirPro were released and this is the A861 version which were called Robo Air. This version has a basic LCD display (with 6 digits), but talks when you press the front button, telling the time in Japanese. It also has alarm and stopwatch modes.

This one was made in 1998 (which was the first year the trademark was registered), and is a limited edition for Astro Boy. The difference between this and the basic model (which was coded SBZV007) is that the top panel is clear revealing the speaker, and there is text printed on the panel. The text says "Oh! Ya? 99SS Astro Boy" and has Astro Boy's silhouette with the copyright Tetsuka Productions. The production run was very limited with only 300 ever being released.

Astro Boy (or Tetsuwan Atomu, or Mighty Atom) was the star of a Japanese manga by Osamu Tezuka (the "God of Manga") which started in 1952. Astro Boy was a robot made by Dr Tenma to replace his son who died in a car crash, but was given to the circus after he realised the robot could never be human. Astro was then rescued by Prof Ochanomizu and ended up fighting injustice, crime, and other evils.

The full model number is A861-4010

Seiko Airpro - Robo Air A861 talking watch

In their history, Seiko has made some strange watches, and today is one of those.

The Seiko Airpro is a watch from the late 90s, early 2000s (the trademark was registered in 1998 and cancelled in 2006), in the same vein as the Reebok Pump trainers, which has a pumping mechanism and inflatable bags behind the watch which can be set to give you a comfortable fit to your wrist. There were 3 different versions of the AirPro, and this is one of them, sometimes known as the Robo Air.

The large black button that can be seen at the bottom of the watch is the rubber pump button, and the small silver button at the top is the pressure release, and this mechanism takes up most of the volume of the watch.

The watch itself is a talking watch with an LCD display (using the module A861), and only tells the time in Japanese (activated by the small black button below the display). The module also has alarm and chronograph functions, and changing the mode is also accompanied by a japanese mans voice announcing the name of the mode.

The full model number (and other codes) is:
A861-4000  A0  T14
The catalogue number is SBZV007 and was originally sold for 21,000 yen (1999)

Robo air page from the Japanese Airpro catalogue