Orients With Yellow Dials

A watch with a yellow dial. How does that make you feel? Clearly, not a color for every occasion – and not one for every watch. Which is why yellow is far from being the most popular or trendy shade of dials. But, put it on a sports watch and suddenly it fits.

Yellow is bright. It has to be; there is no dark yellow, really. Yellow conveys a sense of energy, zest, and liveliness. It reminds us of the warmth of the Sun. It makes us think of bananas, that provide us vitamins and minerals.

Orient was never shy of dishing out yellow versions of its watches, particularly divers – but not just. Today, however, you can browse the brand's entire range of models currently in production, and you won't find a single yellow piece.

I'm not talking about muted yellow dials that are really crème or beige. Yes, you have some watches with a little splash of yellow here and there, but I'm not talking about any of those either. I'm talking about a properly bright, unashamedly yellow dial.

Let's take a look at some past yellow models from the brand.

Perhaps the most celebrated yellow watch from Orient was the 300m Saturation Diver, shown here in Orient Star guise alongside its little brother, the 200m Air Diver, aka "Revolver".

Orient released the yellow Orient Star Saturation Diver in both the 1st and 2nd generation of the watch, as references WZ0271FD and WZ0191EL. It also released the yellow Revolver with both a steel bracelet and a rubber band, as references WZ0391FD and WZ0371FD, respectively.

Another famed lineage of sports watches from Orient was (and still is) the M-Force. Many past generations bearing this name had proper yellow dial versions. Such as the EX04 shown above – or the two versions seen below, belonging to the EX07 family (on the left) and the EL family (on the right, very similar to the Revolver).

Yellow also popped up on various other product lines from time to time. Below you can see some random examples of that: a yellow semi-skeleton model; a Racer; and one of the early divers preceding the Mako.

By the way, you might be wondering why that Racer looks so similar to the EX01 M-Force, and you would be absolutely right – it is in fact a re-branded M-Force! Why and how this happened is the topic for another story…

Orient also applied yellow to its uniquely sporty yet elegant Somes series, in the form of reference WZ0051FR, seen above. You can check out my old review of the black-dial variant of this watch to see what a huge difference this color makes.

Last but not least is the yellow Mako below. Orient released this baby in 2014, to mark the 10^th anniversary of the popular diver.

This makes one think… 2024 is coming up and it will soon be the Mako's 20^th anniversary. I wonder if we are going to see a new yellow Mako next year, either the 42mm or the newer 40mm version…?

What other current production model would you like to see Orient fire up with yellow? 

Pictures that appear in this post were taken from old Orient catalogs and sale ads. Pictures of the 10th anniversary Mako are from Monochrome Watches. The Yellow Mako 40 is, of course, a mock-up prepared by the blog.