The Swatch x Royal Oak Collab Has Been Revealed. It’s Not What You Expected

After a week of teasers and the official reveal of an Audemars Piguet partnership on Friday, along with a never-ending parade of AI slop on Instagram tricking noobs into thinking Swatch was going to make a full BioCeramic Royal Oak, Swatch has now revealed its upcoming Royal Pop collaboration.

And it’s something.

The Royal Pop is not a wristwatch, nor does it “reimagine a complete new way to wear time” as Swatch had suggested when it announced the AP partnership last week. It’s a pocket watch, albeit a pretty unusual, extremely colorful, and quite cool pocket watch that’s probably going to be very difficult to get for a while.

Swatch

Here’s what we know.

Pop and swap it

The Royal Pop is, as Swatch puts it, quite literally a mashup of the AP Royal Oak luxury watch and the Pop Swatch interchangeable plastic watches of the 1980s.

The case is designed to look like a Royal Oak, but like Swatch’s previous luxury watch collabs with Omega and Blancpain, it swaps out metal for colorful BioCeramic. It features the Royal Oak’s distinct vertically brushed octagonal bezel secured to an octagonal case via eight exposed screws.

It also features the Royal Oak’s signature tapisserie dial pattern and recognizable hands and indices, which are coated with Grade A Super-LumiNova. The AP logo appears printed below 12:00, but unlike on a Royal Oak, the words “x Swatch” are printed below it. There are sapphire crystals on both sides, which were not used on either the MoonSwatch or the Scuba Fifty Fathoms.

An exhibition caseback reveals a new version of Swatch’s Sistem51 mechanical movement, which has ditched the rotor to become a manually wound movement for the first time ever. The movement’s plates and bridges are colorfully decorated in a pop art style, and a prominent “Royal Pop” logo in the Royal Oak’s standard font is emblazoned on the rear crystal.

Swatch

The movement boasts 15 active patents and has a 90-hour power reserve, an anti-magnetic hairspring and is rated to -5/+15 seconds per day. The movement’s mainspring barrel also has cutouts that allow you to see when it needs to be wound.

Like other Pop Swatches, the Royal Pop can be “popped” out of its holder to be inserted into another holder, but it’s mainly meant to be worn mounted on a colorful calfskin lanyard that’s available in three different lengths. The watch also includes a separate stand that allows it to be used as a desk clock when not worn on the lanyard.

Swatch

There are two styles of the Royal Pop: Lépine and Savonnette. The former features a crown at 12:00, while the latter has one at 3:00, making it more akin to a wristwatch. But with no strap on offer, the Royal Pop is not designed to be a wristwatch. Still, I give it a month before a Chinese third party puts to market some kind of strap for this thing.

According to Monochrome, the case measures 40mm across and 8.4mm thick, which are some pretty sweet dimensions that are quite close to a Royal Oak Jumbo. Once in its BioCeramic case, which is required to wear the watch on the lanyard, the size bumps up to 44.2mm wide and 53.2mm long.

Swatch

The Royal Pop comes in eight colorways, according to Monochrome, all with names related to the number eight: Otto Rosso (red and pink), Huit Blanc (white with rainbow-colored screws and indices), Green Eight (green and light green) Blaue Acht (light green and light blue), Orenji Hachi (dark blue and orange), Lan Ba (blue and sky blue), Ocho Negro (black and white), Otg Roz (pink, yellow and teal).

Just two are the Savonnette style with the crown at 3:00, which I suspect will be more popular since it will theoretically be easier to turn into a wristwatch down the road. They are the very ’80s-looking Otg Roz and the more broadly appealing double-blue Lan Ba. These two also feature small seconds indicators at 6:00, while the six Lépine styles have no seconds hand at all.

Swatch

Availability and pricing

Swatch has revealed that the Royal Pop will go on sale this Saturday, May 16, at select physical Swatch stores around the world. Buyers are limited to one watch per location per day.

The Lépine style with the 12:00 crown retails for $400, while the small-seconds Savonnette is priced at $420.

Those prices are honestly lower than I expected, and I think these things are going to sell like hot cakes. We’re basically talking about a colorful AP Labubu here. I guarantee these will be hanging off every bag in sight at your next watch meetup.

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