From Heartbreak to Legend: The Birth of the G-Shock

In 1981, a young Japanese engineer named Kikuo Ibe did something most of us dread: he dropped his father’s watch. And not just a little slip-of-the-hand moment—this was a catastrophic, floor-meets-watch disaster. The glass shattered, the hands stopped, and somewhere in that instant, a piece of Ibe’s heart broke too. Most people would have shrugged, bought a new watch, and moved on. Not Ibe. A few days later, while watching construction workers hammering tires, he noticed something odd: none of them wore watches. The reason was painfully simple—ordinary watches couldn’t survive real life. Gravel, hammers, gravity… they were death to any timepiece. And that’s when he made a vow: he would create a watch that could withstand everything. Gravity? Bring it. Water? Sure. Time itself? Absolutely. At Casio, he began what could only be described as a quiet revolution. For two years, Ibe built, smashed, and hurled more than 200 prototypes from rooftops, testing which could endure the chaos of ...