From Royal Oak to Royal Pop: The 54-Year Octagon

1972: the original

Audemars Piguet commissioned a new sport luxury watch in 1971. Gérald Genta delivered the design overnight: an octagonal bezel held by eight visible screws, an integrated tapisserie dial, and the integrated bracelet that would define an entire watch category. The original Royal Oak debuted at the 1972 Basel Fair at 3,300 Swiss francs — roughly ten times the typical price for a steel sport watch at the time.

The watch was almost a commercial failure. AP couldn't sell the initial production run for two years. By 1976, sentiment had shifted; by the 1990s, the Royal Oak was the most-counterfeited luxury watch design in history.

The 8 screws

The eight visible hexagonal screws on the octagonal bezel are the Royal Oak's most identifiable signature. They are not decorative — they hold the bezel against the case and gasket. Their alignment is perfectionist: AP polishes each screw individually so all eight slots point in the same direction at every assembly.

Royal Pop pays homage to those eight screws in two ways: the case retains the octagonal silhouette, and the eight pocket-watch colorways are each named for the number "eight" in a different language — a quiet tribute that only watch nerds will catch.

What Royal Pop is, mechanically

Where the original Royal Oak houses AP's Caliber 2121 ultra-thin automatic (worth a small house), Royal Pop runs Swatch's hand-wound SISTEM51 — the watch industry's most automated movement, assembled in 51 parts on a fully robotic line in Grenchen, Switzerland. 90-hour power reserve. Hand-wound to give the user a physical interaction the original SISTEM51 (automatic) lacks.