Ulysse Nardin Stranger Watch Music Box

I will admit that when I first learned about the Ulysse Nardin Stranger watch earlier in 2013(covered here on Forbes) I thought it was a bit silly. Not silly in the sense that the watch was any more strange than the usual fare that gets my interest, but in the entire presentation. Ulysse Nardin held an event with brand friend Dieter Meier (of band Yell0 who sang "Oh Yea" that was a title song in Ferris Bueller's Day Off - how random is that?) to launch the watch who apparently had an involvement with the design. The watch played music from Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," and in a sense the entire mechanical creation was a sort of classy music box for me. Yes, it sound exactly like something Ulysse Nardin would do and it took years to make.

When meeting with Ulysse Nardin after I initially wrote about the watch I finally got a chance to see this music box "Stranger" watch for myself. You can clearly see traces of brand DNA in the watch from their other musical creations. In fact Ulysse Nardin has a range of musical watches from theSonata (hands-on) with its chiming alarm function to more traditional minute repeaters in very non-traditional watches such as the Minute Repeater Jaquemarts (hands on here). Having said that, while the Stranger is a musical watch like many others, it does not produce sound with hammers and gongs. It is more like a traditional pins and barrel-style music box. Though instead of a barrel it uses a disc.