When it comes to celebrity endorsements, Patrick Swayze’s sixth cousin once removed John Cameron Swayze is simply not modern watch brand ambassador material. A news anchor and game show host during the ’40s and ’50s, Chris Hemsworth he wasn’t. The 1960s, however, was the perfect era for Swayze to take to timepiece advertisements. Whether being caught mid-air by a trained dolphin, or held in the hand of a free-falling diver jumping off the edge of Acapulco’s cliffs in Mexico, Timex watches were the action-bearing beaters of their day. And, in a move that predates similar ‘torture tests’ by over 60 years, here Swayze, with a little help from Satchmo, can be seen to put the brand new Timex 100, entombed in ice, into what appears to be a supercharged blender, sans blades. For good measure, he throws in a few big cubes of ice. G-Shock, eat your heart out. (The action really kicks off at 1:30) Timex needed clarity and credibility, and that’s where John Cameron Swayze’s authoritative “takes a licking and keeps on ticking” mantra found its mark. Enter, the earliest iterations of the Timex Marlin. Timex’s reissue of the cult-classic Marlin in 2017 marked the beginning…
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