We spent the first 24 hours after the Royal Pop announcement trying to figure out if Swatch was playing a joke. A $400 ceramic pocket watch that looks this much like a Royal Oak, and you can’t wear it on your wrist? The lanyard is charming in a 1990s-keychain sort of way, but most of us don’t carry pocket watches. Enter Delugs, the same strap shop that made the MoonSwatch feel wearable, which has already announced it is developing a case-strap adapter. We looked at the renders, the R&D timeline, and the broader question of why Swatch left this money on the table in the first place.
A Pocket Watch That Wants to Be a Wrist Watch
The Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop dropped officially on May 13, 2026, and the response was immediate. Within hours, Reddit’s r/Watches thread filled with the same question we kept asking each other in Slack: where’s the strap. YouTube reviewers Teddy Baldassarre and Britt Pearce posted reaction videos the same evening. Instagram’s watch community piled on. The lanyard, hung from a small bail at the 12 o’clock position, is a clever piece of design, but it isn’t what most buyers want. They want a wrist watch that looks like a Royal Oak and costs $400, not a pocket watch they have to fish out of a jacket.
That gap, between what Swatch shipped and what the audience wanted, is the real story this week.
Why Swatch and AP Probably Won’t Make a Strap
Swatch’s official line is that the Royal Pop is a pocket watch by design, and the lanyard is how you’re meant to carry it. We’re not buying it. AP was never going to let a $400 ceramic copy of its silhouette ship on a Royal Oak-style bracelet. The Royal Oak is AP’s identity. Letting Swatch’s collaboration arm wear that identity on the wrist would dilute the real thing in a way that even MoonSwatch didn’t threaten the Speedmaster.
So they did the legally tidy thing and shipped a watch that, technically, isn’t a Royal Oak. No bracelet, no straight end links, no wrist presence. Then they walked away and let the aftermarket sort it out.
Three strap brands announced concepts within 48 hours.
Who Delugs Is, and Why People Trust Their Rubber
Delugs is a Singapore-based strapmaker that built its reputation on two things. The first is its cut-to-size rubber straps for the Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch, which turned a plastic-cased novelty into something a watch person could actually wear day to day. The second is how the brand actually talks to people. Founder Kenneth Kuan announces projects directly on Instagram, posts mockups before tooling is finished, and treats the comment section like a focus group. That’s a pretty good fit for a launch like the Royal Pop, where the audience is already loud and already paying attention.
Anyone who watched the MoonSwatch aftermarket grow has seen Delugs at the middle of it. That track record is why Project WristPop, announced May 14, read as a real R&D effort instead of a cash grab.
Inside Project WristPop
Kuan posted the Project WristPop announcement on Delugs’ Instagram earlier, and pointed followers to a landing page on delugs.com the same day. The concept is a case-strap adapter rather than a simple replacement band. Because the Royal Pop has no lugs and no integrated bracelet attachment, any wrist strap solution has to mechanically add the connection point that AP intentionally left off. Delugs’ renders show a sleeve that wraps the case and provides spring-bar receivers, with rubber straps in colors that match the Royal Pop palette.
There’s no price yet. No shipping date either. The landing page is a signup form, a render, and a note that R&D is underway. For a 48-hour reaction to a watch nobody saw coming, that’s about as fast as anyone’s moved.
The Crown-at-1:30 Trick
The detail that got watch Twitter going is rotational. In Delugs’ mockups, the case turns so the crown, which sits at 12 in the pocket-watch layout, lands around 1:30 on the wrist. That is the classic driver’s watch position, the one Mille Miglia and a handful of vintage pieces use so the wearer can read the dial without lifting their hand off the wheel.
Whether that was intentional design or a happy consequence of mounting a 12-crown case on a wrist, the result is charming. It also gives the Delugs version a story that the lanyard doesn’t have. A pocket watch on a lanyard’s a nostalgia piece. A driver’s-orientation wrist watch with integrated end links mimicking Royal Oak geometry is a watch you can actually explain to someone at dinner.
Delugs Isn’t Alone
Wristbuddys posted its own Royal Pop strap concept, and Helvetus followed within hours. Both have real catalogs and real distribution behind them. The first-to-market advantage matters here, because nobody wants to wait three months for a strap when they’re holding the watch now. Whoever ships first gets the first wave of buyers and most of the press.
Trust still goes to the brand that’s done this before. For the MoonSwatch generation, that’s Delugs. Wristbuddys and Helvetus are racing on speed. Delugs is betting that you’ve already got one of their straps in a drawer somewhere and know exactly how their rubber feels.
Watch the next two weeks. The order in which these three brands open preorders will determine the shape of the entire aftermarket for at least a year.
Should You Wait, or Just Wear the Lanyard
Here’s where we land. If you bought the Royal Pop because you actually wanted a pocket watch that looks like a Royal Oak, the lanyard’s fine. Leave it alone. If you bought it because you wanted a Royal Oak-shaped thing on your wrist for $400, wait for Delugs, Wristbuddys, or Helvetus. The lanyard isn’t a strap, and clipping the case to a regular NATO looks exactly as bad as you’re picturing.
No pricing from Delugs yet. Based on what they charge for MoonSwatch rubber, the adapter system should land somewhere between $80 and $140, which puts the all-in Royal Pop under $550 with a strap that actually works. That’s still a tenth of the cheapest real Royal Oak. For most people, this is the closest they’ll get to one, and Delugs is the most likely brand to make it feel like a finished watch instead of a workaround.
If you’re still deciding whether the Royal Pop’s even for you, our full Swatch x AP Royal Pop accessories rundown covers the lanyards, charms, and pouches Swatch shipped on day one, and our Royal Pop release primer walks through the May 16 boutique drop. For wider context on what $400 buys you in the Royal Oak universe, we also keep a running list of budget watch alternatives to luxury pieces.
We’ll update this piece the second Delugs opens preorders or posts real specs. Until then, Project WristPop is a promise from the one brand in this category that tends to keep them.
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