@wired: It only took 30 minutes after stores opened at 9 am local time at London’s Carnaby Street before police were called. In New York, fights broke out amid rumors of a stabbing in the line. At locations around the world, police had to assist staff as the vast majority of customers left empty-handed as most of the shops had fewer than 200 watches available. Deals were done within queues as scalpers flipped watches for profit. Within minutes of the first sales, the plastic watches were hitting eBay for thousands of dollars. This is not a description of what happened during the Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop launch on Saturday May 16, this is an account of the 2022 MoonSwatch launch. But a carbon copy of this chaos and mayhem ensued as Swatch stores opened worldwide to sell their extremely limited numbers of Royal Pop pocket watches. Responding to widespread criticism of how Swatch handled the 2022 MoonSwatch launch, Nick Hayek Jr., chief executive of Swatch Group, told WIRED at the time: “We knew for sure this would be a success, because the product is beautiful, provocative, high quality, and the price is fantastic... But what happened … I think nobody in the world could have expected that. It was really crazy.” Hayek's defence was essentially that Swatch could not be held accountable for disturbances so severe some stores were forced to shut for 10 days to let the pandemonium play out, simply because the group could never have predicted the ferocious public reaction to an affordable version of an iconic luxury timepiece coming on sale. No such excuse can be offered this time for the calamitous Royal Pop launch that took place this weekend.

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Monday 18 May 2026 17:30:08 GMT