It is high summer 2008, I am in my early 20s and completely infatuated with this sweet girl.
We go shopping together and she suggests getting me a perfume. Until then, I had never dealt with perfumes, but that didn't matter; of course, I would take whatever she liked best.
In the drugstore, we eventually came to Cool Water Game, and I still remember how the scent blew me away immediately. I perceived the fragrance back then as a great mix of fresh aquatic and at the same time fine, noble, and well-groomed.
For many years, Cool Water Game was to remain my only perfume. I wore it only on special occasions and always felt elegant and well-groomed with it.
Today, in 2024, in my mid to late 30s, I have been collecting perfumes for about a year and I am writing my first review here. By now, I have a somewhat more differentiated opinion about Cool Water Game. I recognize the synthetic base; the fruity notes seem significantly more dominant to me than before. The fruitiness also brings a minimal sweetness that never dominates for me. The bottle is nice, but the cap is cheap plastic. I also now own the original Cool Water Eau de Toilette as well as the Cool Water Aquaman Collector Edition and can also recognize the DNA of Cool Water in the Game flanker. You can clearly tell that something was produced here that was meant to be Cool Water for a 20-30 years younger target audience. The longevity is okay for me (4-6 hours) and the projection and sillage are very restrained. I believe I liked the scent back then also because it is not a monster that takes over the whole room.
However, the feeling of something noble and well-groomed still remains for me, even though I now know significantly more noble and higher-quality fragrances. This scent will probably always hold a special place in my heart. Is it a "typical" mid-2000s scent? Maybe, I don't like to judge. But it always brings me back to that time when summers were slowly getting hotter and you felt like all doors were open to you.
