In my continuing quest to vent my irritation at the mistakes of everyone in the world but me, I’ve written here about strange messages from machines (mojay and NO2), and, more recently, about things that are printed backwards by people who should know better. Sitting here in my glass house, it’s my duty to throw more stones, this time at yet another Swiss watch company.

The culprit today is Torgoen watches, though given their propensity to reverse things, they may actually be called Neogrot, which is much more fun to say. They first caught my eye in this month’s issue of the Smithsonian’s always enjoyable Air & Space Magazine. They have a full page ad, scanned and shared here, that shows one of their watches in the foreground with a grainy, monochrome, slightly fish-eyed airplane  behind it. I’m about 95% certain that this is a CP-121 Tracker on display outside somewhere (note the anti-bird mesh riveted over the engine … maybe the museum at Trenton or Comox?) though the distortion makes ID a little tricky. I am about 104% certain, however, that the image is … wait for it … backwards: note the words "RESCUE" and "DANGER" in the detail blowup, not to mention the pitch of the prop.

To make matters slightly worse, when I went to their website to snarkily try to find some text about how proud they are of their attention to detail, I found no less than three other pictures that were also reversed. I don’t make watches, nor do I make advertising, but, in the words of laymen everywhere … come on, why not just do it right?

Oh well, at least Torgoen watches cost about 98.5% less than their IWC counterparts, about which I ranted previously.

And now back to all the things I was supposed to be doing.