Citizen 7630 - Hello Kitty

Most of the time when I blog merchandise watches they are made by unknown manufacturers. Today's watch is made by a major manufacturer though...

This watch is a Hello Kitty analogue watch. It features the face of Kitty at the 12 o'clock position, and the Hello Kitty name near the bottom of the dial. Hello Kitty is a character by Sanrio, and is actually a girl (not a cat) called Kitty White who was born in London. She was born Nov 1st and is around 5 apples high, and she has a pet cat called Charmy Kitty. The strap is on a matching colour combination, and is a plastic strap printed with a tartan style stitch design.

This Hello Kitty watch was made by Citizen, and is a 3 hand dial design. It uses a 7630 module which is a Citizen quartz movement. The watch has a model number of 7630-A42021, with a number 7630-A42796 in small writing at the bottom of the dial.

The serial number on the watch only has 4 digits, so doesn't follow the normal Citizen pattern, but may suggest less than 9999 were made. The date is given away be the copyright date at the base of the dial which suggests a 1996 release.

Citizen Independent 1481010 Universal Studios C351

It seems to have been a long time since my last 1481010 watch, so here's another one! This is the newest that I have, and until I saw it for sale, I didn't know this variant existed!

The watch is one of Citizen's Independent 1481010 range from the late 90s. Regular readers of my blog will have read about them many times before, but for anyone else, there is a 1481010 overview page where I have all of the information (link at the top right of the page for those not on a rotating mobile view).

This particular model is a C351, which has an Ana-Digi display, and curved metal strap. The inverse LCD display shows time and seconds, and the electronic dial shows a second time (and can be set independently). A second LCD section is just for decoration, and fills/empties by one block every second. The C351 also has dual alarms, a chronograph, and a timer function.
This variant is a merchandise version made in 1998, and is promoting Universal Studios Japan. The watch is of the standard design, but has the text and studio's logo engraved into the metal strap. Spookily, I picked this watch before realising it was very topical as I'm watching a movie later.

Star Trek II Wrath of Khan game watch by Ambassador Imports

Today's watch is a game watch for the movie Star Trek II Wrath of Khan.

The gane actually is a generic spaceship shooting game which was released by Nelsonic (as Space Attacker) and Majestron (as Cosmic Wars). This particular version was licenced from Paramount Pictures Corporation and branded for the 1982 film. The handheld museum site says this is made by Collins Industrial, but that is not mentioned on the watch. The back of the watch just mentions it was made in Hong Kong and by Ambassador Imports. From the things I've seen online, I think it's likely that this was released in or shortly after 1982.

It works using a two layer LCD display, with the time, and day on the top layer, and the date and game on the layer below (-the date uses the same digits as the game score).

The game is a shooting game with the launcher/gun in the middle, and three curved paths above where the targets move. The rest is pretty self-explanatory - you use the gun to take out the targets to score points! There are A and B versions of the game which change the speed depending on your skill level.

Apart from the time and game, the watch also has an alarm function and a light. It's original price was $19.95. The watch manual can be found at the Handheld Museum web site.