First a confession: I own more moonwatches than I care to admit. Never let it be said that WIRED can’t walk the walk when it comes to recommending products—Swatch diligently coaxed a fair amount of cash from me, all in $285 increments. No doubt this was the Swiss company’s dastardly plan, to lure us in, then, oh so gently, hook watch fans. The horological equivalent of a frog hatching. It worked too—Swatch has netted so far millions of Dollars from Moonwatch sales.
But while I’ve been a fan of the Omega x Swatch mashup since we reported on how the hugely lucrative collaboration came about in the first place, I’ve never liked the iterative Moonshine Gold version. Using a sliver of Omega’s exclusive 18K pale yellow gold alloy in each design in a slightly different way, they seemed almost sacrilegious – a way to milk Moonwatch superfans on the hunt to complete the set.
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Now, though, just when I thought I was done with Moonwatch—I’ve gone so far as to upgrade everything to official. $45 Color-matched rubber strap-Swatch has managed to trap me again, And With a Moonshine Gold model: Earthphase Moonshine Gold New Moonwatch mission on the Cold Moon.
Clumsy moniker aside, this version takes the all-white 2024 Snoopy model (WIRED’s top pick of the entire collection), mixes it with Earth phase MoonSwatches, and an upper white and blue swatch replaces the lower original strap for rubber Velcro. Aesthetically, it’s definitely a win, but it’s not Cold Moon’s party trick.
On every $450 Cold Moon Moonswatch, a snowflake is lasered onto its moonshine gold moon phase indicator—and, like true snowflakes, Swatch claims each one will be completely unique. When you consider the volumes MoonSwatches swatches each year, this is no mean feat.
