The Casio ‘Back to the Future’ Watch Is Here

The most futuristic watch of the ‘80s didn’t come from the Swiss valleys of horology, but from Japan – in the shape of a plastic rectangle with a calculator on it. The Casio CA-53 was never meant to be iconic. It just became one. It wasn’t handcrafted. It didn’t feature moon phases or tourbillons. It was just pure, geeky, nerdy tech optimism.

And now, forty years later, that same watch has time-travelled back onto our wrists, rebooted as the Casio CA-500WEBF, a Back to the Future tribute that’s a nostalgia trip, while also cementing itself as a cultural artifact. It’s a pop-culture wormhole, a tiny DeLorean on your wrist that says: “I remember when the future was fun.”

I mean, don’t mistake it for another dragged movie tie-in gimmick. It’s Casio paying homage to the film that made its humble calculator watch immortal. When Back to the Future hit theatres in 1985, Marty McFly (played by a baby-faced Michael J. Fox) strapped on the CA-53W — instantly cementing it as a symbol of geek cool. It wasn’t luxury, but it looked futuristic in a way few watches did back then. You could check the time, calculate your maths homework, and feel vaguely like you belonged in a Spielberg-directed universe.

Technically speaking, the watch is gloriously absurd. The CA-500WEBF has the same resin case, same tiny keypad, same unapologetic 8-bit soul. But the design language is where Casio flexes. The dial borrows cues from the DeLorean — that stainless steel beast that needed just 1.21 gigawatts to blast into another timeline. You’ll find multicoloured calculator keys echoing Doc Brown’s dashboard, a “dashboard destination” display nodding to the film’s time circuits, and a polished silver case that could double as DeLorean bodywork. Flip it over, and there’s the pièce de résistance — an engraved Flux Capacitor caseback, because if you’re going to wear a time machine, you might as well go all in.

Casio even nails the packaging. Forget bland presentation boxes — this one comes wrapped in a VHS-style cassette case, complete with faux rental labels. It’s meta nostalgia at its best; a watch that knows exactly what era it’s from and wears it proudly. It’s also priced to tempt: around 14,000 INR, dropping fittingly on Back to the Future Day — 21 October 2025 — the date Marty and Doc travel to in Part II.

Beyond the film tie-in, though, there’s a larger story here about what this watch represents. In the pre-smartphone world, the Casio calculator watch was wearable tech — a kind of proto-Apple Watch for kids who thought numbers were cool. It was worn by high schoolers, engineers, even Walter White in Breaking Bad. It’s passed through pop culture like a constant — from Cold War optimism to millennial irony — without ever really losing its charm.

And maybe that’s why this edition is really worth it. It’s not chasing minimalism or luxury. It’s loud, camp, a little ridiculous — and that’s precisely the point. It reminds us of when technology felt magical, when movies sold us the dream that the future would be chrome, neon, and full of promise.

Sure, your iPhone can calculate faster, tell time more accurately, and probably alert you when you’ve been nostalgic for too long. But it won’t make you feel like a time traveller. The Casio Back to the Future edition does.

Great Scott, indeed.