In the end, it wasn’t so much a wristwatch as it was … a key chain?

Earlier this week, watch fans turned feral over the announcement that Audemars Piguet was collaborating with Swatch, the mass-market retailer whose timepieces are kitschy, colorful and modest in cost.

The assumption (hope?) was that this collaboration would result in a plastic version of the Royal Oak, the watch that Audemars Piguet is really known for. Many Royal Oak models have a retail price somewhere in the mid-five figures, whereas a Swatch, at the highest end sells for about $500. The Royal Oak owns a particular space in pop culture. Bad Bunny wore one when he performed at the Super Bowl. Future has rapped about it. Certain Royal Oaks sell for six figures on the resale market. It’s a known flex. By Monday afternoon, people were already camping outside Swatch stores for the Saturday release. (There is precedent for such blowout high-low collabs from Swatch. Four years ago, the big story of the world watch was its MoonSwatch, made in partnership with Omega.)

Swatch didn’t initially reveal the design. So people did what they do now when there’s an absence of information: They turned to A.I.

For 24 hours, friends and colleagues bombarded me with Instagram videos of deepfaked rubbery Royal Oaks in Trix-box colors. I fell for a particularly convincing example of a man wearing a cherry red Royal Oak until a better informed friend dispelled that.

“It’s going to be a big lanyard watch,” he said.

He was right. The Royal Pop, as it is called, is a timepiece strung on a lanyard, similar to what you might hang a work ID card on. Swatch calls it a pocket watch, though it looks more like a necklace to me.