Roger Moore Had the Greatest Gadgets in the History of Bond
Next to Vesper martinis, James Bond is best-known for gadgets. Throughout the years, MI6 kept him outfitted in nothing but the best cars, wristwatches, and weapons. Today, Roger Moore, the actor who played Bond through seven films from 1973 to 1985, passed away at the age of 89. To honor his iconic turn as the character, here’s a look at all the best tools of his trade, from the Lotus he drove (and submerged) in The Spy Who Loved Me to the Apple Watch-precursor Seiko G757 timepiece he sported in Octopussy.
* Live and Let Die * (1973)
Rolex Submariner
In this ever-changing world in which we live in, Moore’s Bond always sought out the very latest life-saving gizmos. This early-'70s hit provided him with one of his most memorable devices ever: a tricked-out wristwatch that serves as not only a rope-ripping portable buzzsaw—complete with spinning bezels—but also as a portable electromagnetic-field generator. The latter comes in especially handy (and kinda handsy) when Bond attempts to unzip a dress worn by Miss Caruzo (Madeline Smith). That’s a typically brazen Bond move—but then again, his heart was an open book. —Brian Raftery
The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)
Fake Nipple
Who needs cool gadgets when you can impersonate a villain by donning a fake nipple? In The Man with the Golden Gun, henchman Lazar (Marne Maitland) has a cigarette box full of golden bullets, and the Solex Agitator has the ability to solve the 1973 energy crisis using the sun, but the film's best gadget is Bond’s well-placed false nipple, which he uses to impersonate assassin Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) and get inside crime lord Hai-Fat’s (Richard Loo) estate. It was super cool but also super weird. And yeah, we’re glad Q grew out of his arts-and-crafts phase, too. —Charley Locke
* The Spy Who Loved Me* (1977)
Lotus Esprit
James Bond loves his gadget-laden cars, and Roger Moore got to drive the coolest of them all: a white Lotus Esprit coupe that convincingly transformed into a submarine. It has the usual additional equipment—a torpedo launcher in the front grille and a cement sprayer at the rear to blind pursuers. But the fenders also extend into fins, the dashboard flips around to reveal marine instruments, and Moore drives the car off a dock into the ocean (“Can you swim?” he dryly asks Russian agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) in the passenger seat), where he had a whole new suite of weapons at his disposal. At the end of the underwater chase, Moore pilots the car from the sea onto a packed beach, rolls down the window, and throws out a fish. Fun fact: Elon Musk bought the car in 2013 for a cool $1 million. —Jack Stewart
Moonraker (1979)
Wrist Dart Gun
It takes a lot of space-balls to sneak onto a spaceship with a loaded weapon, but Bond disposes of villain Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) with this nifty, easy-to-conceal li'l killer. Activated by wrist-muscle nerve impulses, the deadly wearable comes equipped with 10 darts: five adorned with armor-piercing heads and five laced with cyanide—the latter causing death in 30 seconds, just enough time for Moore to charmingly dispense one of his trademark Bond bons mots. —Brian Raftery
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Identigraph
In the days before facial recognition and constant surveillance, much more rudimentary systems identified bad guys. To use the Identigraph, Bond and Q have to tell the computer the features—hair color, spectacles style, etc.—they're looking for in order to get a 3-D composite of a villain’s face. Once Bond describes it, the Identigraph searches for their man in the databases of other spy agencies. Located at MI6 headquarters, the machine—inspired by the Identicast device Ian Fleming wrote about in Goldfinger—gives Bond exactly what he needs: a lead on how to find bespeckled Belgian enforcer Emile Leopold Locque (Michael Gothard). —Angela Watercutter
Octopussy (1983)
Seiko G757 Wristwatch
The “latest liquid crystal TV” for the wrist that Q invented in Octopussy was way ahead of its time—and decades ahead of the Apple Watch. Thanks to a homing device update, Bond’s fresh version of the Seiko G757 tracks location not for geolocating the nearest shaken-not-stirred happy hour or Tinder date but for tracking down the Fabergé egg. Q keeps a color prototype of the watch, with its rainbow circle and bright geometrics, in his Rajasthan lab. A few more years of tinkering and it could be ready for WWDC. —Charley Locke
* A View to a Kill* (1985)
Check Copier
To be honest, Kill was one of those Bond flicks in which the bad guys had the market cornered on cool devices: Zorin (Christopher Walken) owned a blimp that allowed him to send his foes into sky-fall mid-meeting, while Mayday (Grace Jones) wielded what looked like a killer fishing rod. But at least Bond can follow a paper trail with this Louis Vuitton check-reading device, which uses ultraviolet rays to pick up on left-behind signatures. Is it the most exciting gadget of the 007 oeuvre? It is not! But at least it gives him a view to a bill. —Brian Raftery