Few watch brands are seemingly having as much fun with a licensed entertainment property as Spinnaker is with SpongeBob SquarePants. As a long-time fan of Stephen Hillenburg’s SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon series (on Paramount/Viacom’s Nickelodeon network), I’ve discussed the odd intersection of SpongeBob SquarePants and wristwatches before. Spinnaker was not the first company to work with the licensed property, but it has certainly been the most prolific to this point. Once or twice a year, Spinnaker unveils a new collection of multiple SpongeBob SquarePants watches (mostly based on Spinnaker’s core timepiece product collection) that are creative, to say the least. (See this assortment of other Spinnaker SpongeBob SquarePants Hull watches.) Today, I’d like to look at one of the Spinnaker Fleuss SpongeBob SquarePants “Frenemies” watches that came out earlier in 2025, and the more recent yellow version of the Spinnaker Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial. Both watches were produced as limited editions, and it looks like Spinnaker is doing a pretty good job of selling out most of its limited-edition SpongeBob SquarePants watches.
While these timepieces are undeniably fun, full of details, and creative, there are often little issues or refinement details that prevent them from being “perfect.” That said, the watches are not expensive and often meant as novelties (even though they are certainly inspired by enthusiast watches and marketed toward the collector community), and they don’t have the sample multiple-year production timelines that more expensive watches might have. That means Spinnaker’s pricing doesn’t build in a lot of room for prototyping and refining.
Both of these Spinnaker SpongeBob SquarePants watches begin with the same base model, which is the Spinnaker Fluess. Both feature 43mm wide steel cases that are water resistant (100 meters for the quartz chronograph and 150 meters for the automatic version), and have flat, AR-coated sapphire crystals over the dial. The Fleuss Automatic SpongeBob SquarePants Frenemies model is a bit thinner at 13mm thick, while the Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial is 14mm thick. Each has a unidirectional rotating diver’s style bezel with a rounded mineral crystal over the colorful insert.
I honestly cannot tell if the person who primarily designs the SpongeBob SquarePants watches for Spinnaker is a fan of the program and characters. Has that person actively watched the show and understands the relationships between the characters and the themes? I am not saying that the designer isn’t a SpongeBob SquarePants fan, but many of the designs of the Spinnaker SpongeBob SquarePants watches are like psychedelic interpretations of the characters, visuals, and superficial personality of the show. As I said, there are some amazing details, such as the use of the SpongeBob SquarePants font for most of the text and numerals, as well as a lot of excellent details including the symbols and characters on the embroidered fabric strap that comes with the Fleuss Automatic Frenemies models. That said, some of these watches tend to focus more on whimsical color combinations and wild displays than actually being a deep part of SpongeBob SquarePants fandom or storytelling.
The Spinnaker Fleuss Automatic SpongeBob SquarePants Frenemies limited edition series consisted of three different models, one featuring SpongeBob SquarePants (the reference ST-5160-01 as pictured), another one featuring Plankton, and a third model featuring Sandy. The watches use the off-centered subsidiary seconds dial, which is part of the Japanese Miyota caliber 8245 automatic movement, as an animation display. The seconds hand is replaced with a disc that moves behind a superimposed image of the SpongeBob SquarePants character. For the purposes of this “SpongeBob Blue” version, the SpongeBob SquarePants character is flipping Krabby patties with the little burgers printed on a transparent seconds indicator disc. I suppose SpongeBob SquarePants and Plankton are “frenemies,” but the two are not on the same watch, and I am not entirely sure how Sandy fits in, even though she might also be described as having a “frenemy” relationship with Plankton. I applaud the creativity, but to understand what Spinnaker’s creative team was thinking here seems to require accepting some rather loose narrative associations.
The overall design is otherwise rather nice, despite the obstructing elements on the dial, which modestly remove from legibility. I like the prominent hour markers and even the printed dial that has nice, albeit difficult-to-see details. If you can forgive some of the oddness and design issues, this is a colorful yellow and blue, and fun diver’s style watch at a low price with an automatic mechanical movement inside. You even have a printed plaque (albeit not at a super high resolution print) with a SpongeBob SquarePants character on the automatic rotor, which you can view through the rear of the case. The Spinnaker Fleuss Automatic SpongeBob SquarePants Frenemies SpongeBob Blue watch was produced as a limited edition of 325 pieces, actually being the most popular of the three Frenemies watches, as the other two limited edition models each had under 300 pieces made. The retail price is $395 USD.
Perhaps it is because I have (now distant) personal experience with caustic inebriants, which have a reputation for bending reality… but I feel that the Spinnaker Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial watch is nothing short of trippy. The overall concept is based on the popularity of watches with actual faces and the use of cartoon hands as watch hands. I’ve seen both themes combined into one dial, but never quite like this. As interesting as these Eyedial Chronograph watches are, I feel like they resulted from an accidental merger of two concepts. I will admit that the result is compelling, but in a wrapped artistic manner, more so than anything else. Normally, you don’t see a character’s hands erupting out of the center of their face. I also find it entirely amusing that Spinnaker could not resist printing “Meca-Quartz Chronograph” in tiny, barely legible text near the top of the dial in the black-colored section. The goal of this black area is to suggest the square nature of SpongeBob SquarePants’s head. Why it was deemed necessary to print unnecessary text in this area is entirely confusing to me. And at the same time, the designer was thoughtful enough to create a matching yellow date disc that more harmoniously integrates with the dial.
Luminous material is a big deal on both of these watches, and for a while now, Spinnaker’s character watches like this, use luminant as a playful material as much as a useless one. Here you see SpongeBob SquarePants’s teeth and eyes glowing in different colors of luminant. The eyes themselves are connected to the subdials, and they do turn. This adds to the visual animation effect of the dial, which helps it to look trippier. With that said, there is a slight issue in my opinion. The right eye is not part of the chronograph but is rather linked to a synchronized 24-hour hand, which acts like an AM/PM indicator. That means it moves in one full circle a day. That’s totally fun. The left eye, on the other hand, is connected to the Japanese Seiko Instruments caliber SII VK64 quartz movement’s 60-minute chronograph. This is cool because it means that one eye turns at a different rate than the other eye. The problem is that, unlike most chronographs that just keep going, this chronograph system stops after it reaches the 60-minute mark, and just resets. That means unless you want the left eye to be in the same position all the time, you’ll constantly be reactivating the chronograph throughout the day. It isn’t a huge deal, especially at this price point, but it is something would probably never realize until after living with the watch for a while.
Spinnaker has made two limited edition versions of the Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial watches, including the pictured yellow reference ST-5154-01 (limited to 700 pieces), and the SP-5154-02 in black, which is limited to 650 pieces. These quartz chronograph watches are somewhat less expensive the the Fleuss Automatic models, and they also come on silicone straps versus the fabric ones. Price for the Spinnaker Fleuss Chronograph SpongeBob SquarePants Eyedial limited edition watches is $325 USD each. They are all certainly weird, but compellingly so (for the money), and fun for fans like me of the SpongeBob SquarePants universe. Learn more at the Spinnaker Watches website.
