Maximilian Büsser has always loved robots. As a child, it was Grandizer, then came Transformers and later, Pacific Rim’s cathedral-sized Jaegers. MB&F’s new creative designer, Maximilian Maertens, shares that passion. Together, they have created the MB&F HM12 The Guardian, the most outrageous new luxury watch of 2026, which comes with its own robot body.
The premise would feel at home in the best science fiction comic or movie. What if your watch were not merely a timepiece but the mind of a machine, its intelligence expressed in jumping hours, trailing minutes and a flying tourbillon spinning inside a sapphire skull? That is precisely what MB&F has built. The HM12 is conceived as a robot’s head: two eyes displaying the time, the tourbillon functioning as exposed brain and an MB&F battle-axe micro-rotor sitting where the mouth would be. It is simultaneously the most horologically serious and joyfully unhinged watch of recent times.
Left: The fathers of MB&F HM12 The Guardian, Maximilian Büsser (left) and Maximilian Maertens (right).
Right: The mechanical face has a shield system that is actuated via the left crown, deploying
armoured visors across the dial or faceplate in the same colour as the robot.
To further highlight HM12’s sensory aspect, the mechanical faces has a shield system actuated via the left crown, deploying armoured visors across the dial or faceplate, snapping shut before an imagined fight. More than 200 precision-engineered components are dedicated to this function alone, finished to haute horlogerie standards. Meanwhile, the 646-component in-house calibre delivers 84 hours of power reserve, with a guilloché dome on the rear executed with Kari Voutilainen.
On the robot, the right arm “shield” encases a loupe, the left arm “laser gun” is a detachable fluorescent light.
Because of the flexible top lugs, the HM12 watch once detached from the strap can be placed as the face and mind of The Guardian.
Clip the HM12 onto The Guardian’s shoulders and what materialises on your desk would not look out of place in Pacific Rim’s Shatterdome. Built by L’Epée 1839 across 755 components, The Guardian carries a mechanical thermometer heart, a loupe-equipped shield arm for inspecting the movement, and a UV torch arm that floods everything in Super-LumiNova glow in three colours: blue, green, or purple. At 38.2cm tall and 15kg, this is not a watch stand. It is a statement.
MB&F HM12 The Guardian comes in three colours, limited to 12 pieces each.
Only 36 examples exist, 12 each in blue, purple, and green. It has taken four years of development, nearly 1,500 components and one magnificent obsession. MB&F has always believed a creative adult is a child who survived. With HM12 The Guardian, that child just built their greatest robot yet.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
Also recently launched by MB&F, the LM Perpetual Chromatic Editions
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