Six of the eight Royal Pops are pocket watches that have to be turned to work on a wrist. The Lan Ba is not one of them.
It is one of only two Savonnette references in the collection: crown at 3 o'clock, small seconds at 6, dial reading upright the way every wristwatch has been arranged for the last hundred years. Put it on a strap and nothing has been corrected, adapted or compromised. It simply looks like a watch — which is a different starting point from every article written about the other six, and it changes what the strap is for.
First, the only choice you have to make
The Royal Pop has no lugs, so there is no lug width to look up. Fit is decided by the layout of your reference.
Six are Lépine style — crown at 12 o'clock, hours and minutes only. Two are Savonnette — crown at 3, small seconds at 6.
The Lan Ba (Ref. SSX03L100N) is a Savonnette, so on the Royal Pop Lan Ba strap and case set you want the Crown at 3 version. On this page that option is already selected for you, because it is the right one for this reference — but check it before you add to cart, because the two layouts are genuinely different parts and the wrong one will not sit right.
One warning specific to this reference, and it is the reason people order incorrectly. Two Royal Pops are named for blue. The Lan Ba is Mandarin for blue eight. The Blaue Acht is German for eight blue — and it is a Lépine, crown at 12. Anyone searching "Royal Pop blue strap" lands on both, and choosing the wrong one means the wrong layout rather than merely the wrong shade. Check the crown position on your own watch: at 3 it is the Lan Ba's family, at 12 it is not.
The Lan Ba does not need converting — it needs finishing
On the six Lépine references the case does real work. A crown at 12 o'clock is correct on a pocket watch and wrong on a wrist, so the case turns the watch head until the crown lands at roughly the two o'clock position and the whole thing becomes wearable. That is a clever solution to a problem.
The Lan Ba has no such problem. The crown is where a wristwatch crown belongs. The small seconds sits at 6, which is where dress watches have put it for a century. Nothing is rotated, nothing is compensated for, and the result is the reference that looks least like a converted object and most like a watch Audemars Piguet might have drawn.
That has one consequence worth acting on. On the other six, a bold strap reads as part of the joke. They are pop-art objects and they are allowed to be. The Lan Ba is not playing that game — it is the reference that could pass unremarked in a room full of proper watches, and a loud strap is the one thing that would give it away. Here, restraint is not the cautious option. It is the option that gets you what you bought the Lan Ba for.
The small seconds changes the dial arithmetic too
There is a second, quieter reason to keep the strap plain, and it has nothing to do with taste.
The Lépine references have two hands on a clean field. The Lan Ba has two hands plus a sub-dial — a recessed circle with its own track and its own hand, cutting into the Petite Tapisserie at 6 o'clock. That is one more element than any other Royal Pop dial carries, and it is the element doing most of the "this is a real watch" work.
A busy strap competes with it. A plain one lets it be the detail your eye finds. This is the inverse of the Green Eight, where the dial has nothing at all going on and the strap has to supply the interest. Here the dial has already handled that.
Colour: repeat one of the two blues, or stay out of it
The Lan Ba pairs a light blue bezel with a deeper blue dial — one colour at two depths.
Blue is the easiest place in the collection for this to work, because bezel-and-dial blues are an established watch convention rather than a novelty. The pairing has precedent, so it does not need rescuing. Which means the strap has two honest routes:
- Pick up the deeper blue. The dial is the darker of the two, so a deep blue strap carries the watch's own weight outward and the light blue bezel stays the bright ring at the top. This is the version that looks most like a designed object rather than an assembled one.
- Stay neutral. A neutral leaves both blues exactly as they are and lets the watch be the only colour on your wrist. Quieter, and the safer of the two if the Lan Ba is going to be worn alongside anything else.
What does not work is a blue that is neither of the watch's two blues. Blue has more usable shades than any other colour, which sounds like an advantage and is not: a strap sitting between the bezel blue and the dial blue reads as a third opinion, and three blues on one wrist is the point at which the eye stops seeing a colour scheme and starts seeing a mismatch.
The buckle is brushed stainless, which is right here. Blue takes polished hardware badly in daylight, and on a watch whose whole case is one hue a bright metal highlight becomes the loudest thing in the picture.
What you are actually fitting
The Royal Pop was designed as a pocket watch. Swatch supplies a calfskin lanyard in three lengths and a desk stand, and no wrist option at all.
The Helvetus case is machined around the exact 40 mm octagonal Bioceramic head, 8.4 mm thick. The head pops out of its original chassis, clicks into the case, and the strap clips onto the case. Nothing is drilled, glued or altered; the sapphire caseback stays uncovered so the hand-wound SISTEM51 is still on show; and the whole thing reverses in seconds. The strap runs on quick-release hardware, so once the case is fitted the strap comes on and off without tools.
Each set is made for its own reference and layout, so they are not interchangeable — and on a Savonnette that matters more than anywhere else, because the layout difference is structural rather than cosmetic. The full Royal Pop strap and case range covers all eight, with further options being added.
A short word on the watch
The Royal Pop landed in May 2026 and did to Audemars Piguet's design language what the MoonSwatch did to the Speedmaster: octagonal bezel, eight hexagonal screws, Petite Tapisserie dial, Royal Oak hands with luminous coating, all in Bioceramic. The eight references are named for the number eight in eight different languages, a nod to the bezel's eight sides — this one being the Mandarin one.
Behind the sapphire caseback is a hand-wound version of the SISTEM51, a first for that calibre, with a 90-hour power reserve. It is rated to 20 metres, so keep it away from swimming pools. Rubber here is about wearing the watch without thinking, not about water.
The two Savonnettes were the quiet story of the launch. Most of the coverage went to the bright Lépines, and the pair with the crown at 3 got fewer column inches — which is exactly why they have aged well. Of the eight, the Lan Ba is the one you can wear without explaining, and the small seconds is the reason.
Common questions
How do I know if mine is a Lan Ba or a Blaue Acht? Look at the crown. At 3 o'clock with a small seconds sub-dial at 6, it is a Savonnette and the Lan Ba's family. At 12 o'clock with two hands and no sub-dial, it is a Lépine — a different layout and a different part.
Will a Royal Oak or MoonSwatch strap fit it? No. The Royal Pop has no lugs, so a conventional strap has nothing to attach to. It needs the case adapter, tooled to the Bioceramic head. If you also own a MoonSwatch, that range is separate and cut to 20 mm.
Can I use a set bought for one of the Lépine references? No. The layouts are different and the sets are made for their own reference. If you also own a Lépine — the Ocho Negro is the most-worn of them — it needs its own set.
Does the case damage the watch? No. It clicks around the original case head on the same principle the factory lanyard uses, and comes off the same way. Nothing is modified.
I own a Royal Oak as well — is it the same part? Different part, same workshop. The Audemars Piguet strap range covers the Royal Oak 39 and 41, Offshore 42 and 44 and the Offshore Diver — the Offshore 44 range among them — and the Royal Pop case grew directly out of that work.
Getting it onto the wrist
Helvetus has been engineering aftermarket straps for the Royal Oak family for years, which is why the Royal Pop case exists at all — the tolerances and the FKM compound come straight off that programme. Every rubber strap carries a lifetime warranty, shipping is free worldwide with no import costs at your end, returns run for 14 days, and more than 50,000 customers have bought from us.
The Lan Ba was the reference that always looked like it belonged on a wrist. The strap and case set is the part that puts it there.
Helvetus is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Audemars Piguet or Swatch AG. All trademarks are used for descriptive and compatibility purposes only. The watch is not included.
