The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 1981–1983
Casio's G-Shock survives a 10m drop, 10-bar water and 10-year battery — 50M sold
Casio engineer Kikuo Ibe targets a watch that survives 10m drops, 10-bar water and 10-year batteries — the floating-module G-Shock sells 50M by 2009.
Casio
What it had to solve
In 1983 Casio designer Kikuo Ibe formed Project Team Tough, an eight-member unit, to build a watch that would not break when dropped. He set the 'Triple 10' goal: shock resistance for a 10-meter fall, water resistance to 10 bars and a 10-year battery — a standard that defied an industry treating watches as delicate precision instruments.
How it works
In the early 1980s wristwatches were sold as thin, delicate dress accessories, and a dropped watch usually meant a trip to the repair shop. Casio designer Kikuo Ibe wanted the opposite: a watch that would not break when dropped. In 1983 he formed Project Team Tough, an eight-member unit inside Casio, to chase what became known as the 'Triple 10' — survival of a 10-meter free fall, water resistance to 10 bars and a 10-year battery life.
The team burned through more than 100 failed prototypes. The breakthrough came when Ibe watched a child play with a rubber ball and realized the module should not be armored but suspended: cushioned and supported at only a few points inside a hollow case, so an impact travels around the movement rather than through it. This 'float' construction became the skeleton of every G-Shock for decades, starting with the DW-5000C-1A in 1983.
Japanese consumers initially ignored the chunky watch, so Casio's American office ran a TV commercial showing it slapped across an ice rink in place of a hockey puck. Viewers accused Casio of false advertising, a news program organized independent tests, and the watch survived them still counting seconds. In the 1990s the skateboarding community adopted its toughness and styling, opening the door to fashion and music culture — Coldplay, Eminem and the film Speed all put G-Shocks on screen.
Why it lands
- The Triple 10 spec was extreme and testable, so the claim could be proven on camera instead of asserted.
- Floating the module in empty space solved the problem at its root, making durability a design principle rather than a feature.
- The hockey-puck stunt turned disbelief itself into proof, converting an accusation of false advertising into free verification.
- Durability gave the watch a personality that youth culture could adopt, moving it from tool to fashion item.
What it did
G-Shock became a cultural icon: cumulative sales passed 50 million by 2009, the line reached more than 2,000 models sold in 96 countries, and its tough styling was adopted by the 1990s skateboarding scene, eventually appearing in music videos and films.
What you can take
Make the constraint a testable promise: the extreme 'Triple 10' spec turned engineering into storytelling, and a watch built to survive abuse became a style statement.
Since then
Casio never let the line stand still: Baby-G launched for women in 1994, the professional Master of G series grew out of 1990s models for divers, pilots and racing mechanics, and 'The G' added solar charging and calibration-signal timekeeping in 2002. By 2009 cumulative sales passed 50 million watches across 96 countries with more than 2,000 models, and collaborations with skate and streetwear brands kept the brand alive into the 2020s.
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