Top Notes 
Bergamot
Galbanum
Lemon
Theoretical Shoelace
Heart Notes 
Iris
Lily of the valley
Orange blossom
Base Notes 
Cedar
Musk
Sandalwood
Kakuska
4 Reviews
Translated · Show original
Kakuska
7
"Bocky"
Jeanne Arthes, the manufacturer of Rocky Man, is part of the Arthes Group, a French perfume company based in Grasse. After its founding in 1978, the company marketed its fragrances and achieved its first major success in the early eighties with the million-seller Cobra - which those of us who are not quite so young anymore will remember - allowing it to increasingly establish its own production facilities in Grasse between 1987 and 1995. Cobra, a floral-oriental women's perfume that has so far received little attention on Parfumo and currently holds an undeservedly weak rating, can be considered a precursor to Diors Poison and was rightly very successful - despite its outwardly unappealing presentation, it is a true scent for divas!
Such praise cannot be said about Rocky Man. Nevertheless, the fragrance, I have been told, was quite successful in the States at least until the early nineties. According to Fragrantica's categorization, it is an aromatic-woody scent; however, thanks to the, ahem, generosity of a perfume enthusiast who values anonymity, I was able to conduct a self-test today and only detect the influence of woody notes - sandalwood and cedar - very late in the scent's progression. Throughout, the fragrance, to put it bluntly, smells like a cheap pick-up water that likely represents an attempt, at some point - I couldn't find an exact release year - to financially capitalize on the success of the Rocky Balboa boxing and milieu films in the wake of Cobra's success. With the titular slum boxer Rocky Balboa, Rocky Man shares only fighting spirit and endurance - once on the skin, scrubbing and disinfectant spray won't help, RM remains as stubborn, clingy, and audacious as Rocky in the final round of the Moscow fight against Ivan Drago. "Ärrst wänn ärr dodd ist ist ärr dodd!"
This endurance, which suggests not exactly high-quality ingredients, stands in the way of my desire to forget this work as quickly as possible. Right after spraying, the top note makes me grimace, a penetrating citrus-spicy (basil?) scent, already underpinned with plenty of musk, rises to my nose, which would have been well-received by not even sixteen-year-old high school graduates in the early eighties - probably unlike their prom partners of the same age, who supposedly used this musky brew as a pick-up line in hopes of a pre-college score. The bottle shape reminiscent of a muscular male torso, the packaging printed with a petting scene, and the increasingly strong musk influence in the scent's progression, which only hints at woody notes towards the end, certainly did not contribute to a reduction of testosterone among RM's target audience!
With such a target audience and its intended purpose, RM should have had a slightly different name. With a bit of, well, tutoring reaching into the collective consciousness on Wikipedia, it has become known that the creator and actor of Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone, in his youth - 1970, six years before the first Rocky success - worked as an actor in the sex film "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" out of sheer financial necessity. As it goes with youthful sins - they eventually catch up with you, and so "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" was pulled from the dirty box after the first two Rocky successes, dusted off, re-released under the title "Bocky," and marketed with the catchy slogan "The Italian stud shows where the hammer hangs" (punctuation original). "Bocky" would have fit as a name for RM like a butt on a bucket!
Such praise cannot be said about Rocky Man. Nevertheless, the fragrance, I have been told, was quite successful in the States at least until the early nineties. According to Fragrantica's categorization, it is an aromatic-woody scent; however, thanks to the, ahem, generosity of a perfume enthusiast who values anonymity, I was able to conduct a self-test today and only detect the influence of woody notes - sandalwood and cedar - very late in the scent's progression. Throughout, the fragrance, to put it bluntly, smells like a cheap pick-up water that likely represents an attempt, at some point - I couldn't find an exact release year - to financially capitalize on the success of the Rocky Balboa boxing and milieu films in the wake of Cobra's success. With the titular slum boxer Rocky Balboa, Rocky Man shares only fighting spirit and endurance - once on the skin, scrubbing and disinfectant spray won't help, RM remains as stubborn, clingy, and audacious as Rocky in the final round of the Moscow fight against Ivan Drago. "Ärrst wänn ärr dodd ist ist ärr dodd!"
This endurance, which suggests not exactly high-quality ingredients, stands in the way of my desire to forget this work as quickly as possible. Right after spraying, the top note makes me grimace, a penetrating citrus-spicy (basil?) scent, already underpinned with plenty of musk, rises to my nose, which would have been well-received by not even sixteen-year-old high school graduates in the early eighties - probably unlike their prom partners of the same age, who supposedly used this musky brew as a pick-up line in hopes of a pre-college score. The bottle shape reminiscent of a muscular male torso, the packaging printed with a petting scene, and the increasingly strong musk influence in the scent's progression, which only hints at woody notes towards the end, certainly did not contribute to a reduction of testosterone among RM's target audience!
With such a target audience and its intended purpose, RM should have had a slightly different name. With a bit of, well, tutoring reaching into the collective consciousness on Wikipedia, it has become known that the creator and actor of Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone, in his youth - 1970, six years before the first Rocky success - worked as an actor in the sex film "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" out of sheer financial necessity. As it goes with youthful sins - they eventually catch up with you, and so "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" was pulled from the dirty box after the first two Rocky successes, dusted off, re-released under the title "Bocky," and marketed with the catchy slogan "The Italian stud shows where the hammer hangs" (punctuation original). "Bocky" would have fit as a name for RM like a butt on a bucket!
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