"It was in the summer of 1981 that I learned that Kikuo Ibe was experimenting with a watch that wouldn't break when you dropped it. It sounded so interesting that I decided to get involved," recalls Yuichi Masuda, now head of product development at Casio. Together with product designer Takashi Nikaido, who dreamed up the "G-Shock" name, Ibe and Masuda formed the core of a team of young designers and developers called "Project Team Tough". It was this talented group who first developed this unique "shock-resistant watch". Their goal was to build a watch that was comfortable enough to wear everyday but still tough enough to withstand impacts. They also wanted to design a watch that embodied a certain lifestyle in the same way that wearing jeans did.

"Because we were making a watch that nobody had ever owned before, we didn't really know just how tough to make it. So we tried dragging it around at the beach to test its resistance to sand and subjected it to the vibration trials used to test whether motorbikes met their durability standards."
This led to the release of the first G-Shock, the "DW-5000" in 1983. But the attraction of the G-Shock as a watch that was also a "lifestyle" tool was slow to dawn on consumers.
"We were really frustrated. That's why we were so pleased when we heard that the G-Shock had done so well in the U.S." The G-Shock finally broke into the Japanese market by being imported back into Japan from the U.S., where its popularity was soaring. "It really took off on the Japanese market from around 1991 onwards. At the time, it was popular as one aspect of street fashion. But we were never interested in just riding fashion trends; we stuck to our original strategy of the G-Shock as the embodiment of toughness."
The G-Shock has enjoyed continued support for 25 years, becoming an integral part of the culture not by simply following fashion trends, but by never losing sight of its broad appeal as a shock-resistant watch, something that is intrinsically valuable. So while continuing to provide real value to early generations of fans, the popularity of the G-Shock has endured for 25 years and is now finding favor with a new generation of young enthusiasts. Its ongoing popularity is a testament to the fact that the G-Shock concept has always stayed totally true to its origins.
"Some people say that mobile phones have replaced wristwatches, but the G-Shock is more than just a timepiece. Its a way of expressing yourself. I like to think of it as an enduring favorite among watches." Masuda's ringing endorsement of the G-Shock is clearly underpinned by his total confidence in this unique product.

The revolutionary "shock-resistant" construction that made me into an engineer(Kikuo IBE)>>