Krayon's PAC-MAN Anywhere Watch Blends Nostalgia With Platinum Haute Horology

Haute horology has produced pop-culture collaborations before, but rarely one with Krayon's combination of mechanical credibility and personal origin story. The Neuchâtel atelier unveiled the PAC-MAN Anywhere Limited Edition earlier this month, a 15-piece platinum series born from a shared childhood memory between Rémi Maillat and Fei Hou, the founding duo who run Krayon as both a creative partnership and a life one.

Maillat, born in Switzerland in 1984, discovered Pac-Man in the electric atmosphere of European arcades. Hou, born in Beijing in 1986, played it alone on her family's first computer. When PAC-MAN celebrated its 45th anniversary this year, the convergence of those two distinct childhoods, animated by the same pixelated joy, became the conceptual foundation for a platinum watch priced at CHF 188,000, approximately $237,758.

The piece is built on Krayon's Anywhere movement, which the brand has been refining since its 2017 debut. At its core is the hand-wound Calibre C030: 432 components, 55 jewels, running at 21,600vph with a 72-hour power reserve, fitted into a movement just 5mm thick. Its signature complication tracks sunrise and sunset times with accuracy calibrated to the wearer's specific latitude. Before shipping, Krayon's watchmakers set each piece to match the buyer's location, which is why the collection carries the name Anywhere.

The PAC-MAN edition makes one defining mechanical substitution: the 24-hour sun indicator is replaced by PAC-MAN himself, tracking his arc across a polished black onyx dial as the hours pass. The maze is rendered through translucent tampography, a pad-printing technique that deposits ink onto the stone in ultra-fine layers. The labyrinth stays invisible under flat light and reveals itself only when struck at an oblique angle. Above the onyx, superimposed sapphire discs carry hand-painted ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, in their exact 1980 pixel proportions. At midnight, the four turn blue, precisely as they do when a Power Pellet is consumed in the game. Sunset becomes a cookie. Some dials feature a cherry; others, a strawberry.

No two of the 15 pieces share an identical dial. Hou personally arranges each disc composition, making the series a legitimate Métiers d'Art endeavor rather than a licensed flourish. The 39mm PT950 platinum case stands just 9.5mm tall and is finished with a hand-stitched black alligator strap and a platinum pin buckle. The collaboration was made in partnership with Bandai Namco Entertainment, the current steward of the franchise that Toru Iwatani first launched in Japan on May 22, 1980.

As Hou herself has put it: "Krayon knows how to smile." At CHF 188,000, with 432 components and a midnight ghost sequence that no conventional dial complication has ever attempted, the PAC-MAN Anywhere is the rare luxury gift that demands an explanation and then, once given, makes the price feel almost beside the point.