Oris Launches Its Third Muppets Collaboration: The ProPilot X Gonzo Edition

The suspense has been building. And now, finally, it’s here: the Oris ProPilot X Gonzo Edition, a daring mechanical act created in collaboration with Disney’s The Muppets’ one and only Great Gonzo.

‍Meet the Great Gonzo‍

Since 1976, Gonzo has never met a stunt he didn’t like. He introduced himself to the world on The Muppet Show by eating a rubber tyre to the strains of Flight of the Bumblebee, and he's been defying gravity, logic, and good sense ever since. Across decades on stage and screen, he’s become one of the most beloved members of the Muppets family, adored not in spite of his weirdness but entirely because of it. Endlessly curious, always enthusiastic, and completely comfortable in his own skin, Gonzo has built a career on being exactly, unapologetically himself.

That’s the spirit Oris aims to celebrate with this new launch, the third watch made in collaboration with Disney’s The Muppets, following special editions for Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. This one might just be the boldest yet.

Serious watchmaking, not-so-serious spirit‍

Watchmaking is a serious business, and Oris takes its craft seriously indeed. Yet as an independent Swiss watchmaker charting its own course, the brand has never lost its sense of play along the way. Its stated philosophy puts joy, laughter, and a life well lived before anything else — the same instinct that first drew it to Disney’s The Muppets, and that shaped its earlier pieces with Kermit and Miss Piggy. This time, the collaborator is the beloved star of stage and screen, The Great Gonzo.

An unconventional watch for an unconventional star‍

The ProPilot X Gonzo Edition is every bit as bold and daring as its namesake. It’s built on the ProPilot X Calibre 115, a taut, highly technical, hand-wound movement in titanium, skeletonised by Oris’s in-house engineers. Calibre 115’s signature features include a colossal 10-day power reserve and a non-linear power reserve indicator that grows more precise the closer the watch gets to needing a wind.

From there, it’s all Gonzo. The gradient colourway — blue melting into red melting into yellow — is drawn from his fur and his famously fearless sense of style. The lasered dial ring shifts colour depending on how the light catches it, not unlike one of Gonzo’s own stage illusions. The power reserve hand takes the shape of a chilli pepper, a nod to one of his signature shirt designs. And the power reserve counts down not in days, but in “10 GREAT days”, a wink at his stage name.

The big reveal‍

The most ambitious detail is saved for the movement itself. At 12 o’clock, the skeletonised barrel reveals the mainspring, the 1.8-metre coil of metal that stores the watch’s power. Laser-etched along its edge are tiny markings that, as the watch is wound, gradually align to form Gonzo’s grinning, wide-eyed face. Fully wound, the face comes together; as the power runs down and the chilli-shaped hand creeps towards zero, it scatters apart again, echoing the tension of Gonzo waiting for a stunt countdown to hit zero.

Oris is calling it a genuine watchmaking first, a serious technical achievement, even if, in classic Gonzo fashion, seriousness was never really the point.

Asked why the ProPilot X Calibre 115 felt like the right stage for Gonzo’s story, Oris’s Head of Design Lukas Bühlmann explained: “The ProPilot X Calibre 115 already has an unconventional, distinctive design, with plenty of daring features to discover — an open barrel, a 10-day power reserve, a non-linear power reserve indicator. Straight away, you’re dealing with a genuinely unusual watch. And because the base design is quite monochromatic, it gave us a real palette for bold colour experimentation. Gonzo is so outgoing when it comes to fashion, and a colour gradient that shifts from blue to red to yellow — that’s just so him.”

Wind it fully, and Gonzo’s grin appears out of nowhere. Let the power run down, and he scatters apart again: a small piece of mechanical theatre that says more about 50 years of Muppets showmanship than any press release ever could.

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