THE MOON, SNOOPY AND THE SPEEDMASTER

 

An A-list Hollywood star of the calibre of Tom Hanks and the comic book world's funniest and most famous beagle, the legendary Snoopy , have two unsuspected things in common. They are the moon and the Omega Speedmaster .In fact, 25 years ago, the actor starred in Ron Howard's celebrated film ' Apollo 13 ', dedicated to the space mission of the same name in 1970 , making it famous thanks to the famous phrase " Houston, we have a problem ", pronounced by the 'astronaut' Hanks himself.The problem, which actually happened, was a serious failure of the spacecraft's reactors, which could have led to a tragic end to the flight, making it impossible to return. A manual ignition was therefore dramatically necessary, which had to last exactly 14 seconds , and which, thank goodness, succeeded.On the astronauts' wrists, to time that time with fundamental precision, was of course the legendary Omega Speedmaster , which had already 'landed' on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission.


And this is where Snoopycomes in, because this episode earned the Speedmaster in 1970 the Silver Snoopy Award, the highest honour bestowed by the astronauts of NASA: a statuette depicting the very bracelet drawn by the great cartoonist Charles Schulz, a staunch supporter of space missions.

In 2003, Omega unveiled a limited edition commemorative Speedmaster in 5441 pieces, commemorating the duration of the mission (142 hours, 54 minutes and 41 seconds).

In 2020, to celebrate fifty years of that glorious award, an exceptional Speedmaster saw the light of day; its official name would be 'Silver Snoopy Award', but of course it was immediately renamed simply Snoopy.

And indeed, the little bracelet immediately leaps to the eye, appearing both on the dial (very elegant with its white and blue colour scheme) at nine o'clock inside the chronograph subdial, and on the incredible back, where the earth and moon are reproduced: around the latter, as the chrono seconds are activated, a small ship with Snoopy inside moves in a rotating direction.

The earth, on the other hand, completes one revolution around itself in one minute.

A beautiful watch (blue is also used in the bezel and the fabric strap) and exceptional, which to us, lovers of Haute Horlogerie and the formidable 'Peanuts' strips by Charles Shulz, imaginatively evokes the image of the mythical Snoopy, sitting as always on the roof of his kennel, intent on gazing at the moon wearing a Speedmaster created especially for him.