Never owned it before today and hadn't smelled it in 40 years. It's...not what I expected. These are my impressions as best I can convey them, as a generous spray dries down: Dark...deep...slightly, weirdly musty/musky...a resinous and smoky something lurks under a flat greenish note with the barest 'there and gone' wisps of pine. Some cigarette tobacco? Maybe. Definitely got some vetiver. But there's nothing here that could be called punchy, bright, or sparkling, words I've read in many reviews. It's STALE and DULL, like concentrated Brut combined with Avon Deep Woods. After 20 minutes, projection seems nil. It's "green" but a boring green. To those familiar, does this sound at all correct to you? It can't be what I've always seen described, or at least as I imagined it. It's so unimpressive, I wonder if the bottle is skunked or if, yeah, that's how bad reformulated Polo has now gotten. It's from an unused, sealed 2014 tester, btw, that has been well aerated.
I like it on some other people, but on myself I get the same results. I think it may be a body chemistry thing. I have some colognes and Edt's that just work perfect for me but are a dud on my son.
It's been a while since I've deliberately exposed myself to Polo Green. It's always been a powdery base with a white musk and oakmoss component. The oakmoss may have been dialed back or removed, but it's never been a "bright" scent, and other than that, has not been reformulated, to my knowledge.
Oakmoss is supposedly long gone (the biggest failing of many reformulations but especially bad for Polo, it's said), on top of two or three identifiable revisions as it changed corporate hands. Plus various minor tweaks. Fragheads can be quite meticulous in their record keeping. My only scent memory of it is from around the time Drakkar was still big. They're connected in my mind as I recall thinking both were noticeably sharp (no doubt oversprayed by whoever wore them, but still). I believed they were similar. Now not very. Perhaps I never actually smelled Polo but I would swear that I had.
