First a confession: I own more MoonSwatches than I care to admit. Never let it be said that WIRED does not walk the walk when it comes to recommending products—Swatch has assiduously extracted a considerable amount of cash from me, all in $285 increments. This was no doubt the Swiss company’s dastardly plan all along, to lure us in, then, oh so gently, get watch fans hooked. The horological equivalent of boiling a frog. It’s worked, too—Swatch has, so far, netted hundreds of millions of dollars from MoonSwatch sales.
But while I’ve been a fan of the Omega X Swatch mashup since we reported on exactly how the hugely lucrative collaboration came to be in the first place, I have never liked the iterative Moonshine Gold versions. Employing a sliver of Omega’s exclusive 18K pale yellow gold alloy in marginally different ways on each design, they seemed almost cynical—a way of milking the MoonSwatch superfans on the hunt to complete the set.
A hidden Snoopy message on the Cold Moon’s dial is revealed under UV light.
Photograph: Courtesy of Swatch
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The MoonSwatch comes with a rubber strap upgrade over the original launch models.
Photograph: Courtesy of Swatch
Now, though, just when I thought I was done with MoonSwatch—having gone as far as to upgrade all of mine with official $45 color-matching rubber straps—Swatch has managed to ensnare me once again, and with a Moonshine Gold model: the new MoonSwatch Mission To Earthphase Moonshine Gold 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 the Earthphase MoonSwatches, and replaces the inferior original strap for a superior white and blue Swatch rubber velcro one. Aesthetically, it’s definitely a win, but this is not the Cold Moon’s party trick.
On each $450 Cold Moon MoonSwatch, a snowflake is lasered onto its Moonshine Gold moon phase indicator—and, just like a real snowflake, Swatch claims each one will be completely unique. When you consider the volumes of MoonSwatches Swatch produces each year, this is no mean feat.
The unique golden snowflakes appear on the moon phase dial of the Cold Moon.
Photograph: Courtesy of Swatch
Such an endeavour is reminiscent of the company’s recently announced AI-DADA tool, which uses OpenAI tech to let you create a unique Swatch design using AI prompts, though sadly not on MoonSwatches yet. With the new Cold Moon and its individual snowflake designs, MoonSwatch owners will at least be able to get a little of that 1/1 feeling.
Exactly how Swatch is managing this “bespoke” process is unclear. I asked Swatch to explain, but the company is, right now at least, unable to say, which is odd. Personally, I hope the individual snowflake generation may well use a version of the OpenAI AI-DADA platform, which would make sense. But until Swatch is prepared to say more this will have to remain conjecture.
Swatch claims that every single Cold Moon MoonSwatch with feature a golden snowflake with an individual design so that “no two are the same.”
Photograph: Courtesy of Swatch
Perhaps even more unique than its design, though, is how—or, more precisely, when—you’ll be able to get your hands on one. Despite the fact you can now buy a small number of the MoonSwatch collection online, this new version is likely to be trickier to get a hold of, thanks to a somewhat idiosyncratic sales rollout.
After being available worldwide at Swatch stores from December 4 until the northern hemisphere’s last day of winter on March 20, 2026, the 42-mm Cold Moon will only become available to buy on days “when snow is falling in Switzerland.” This will, according to the Swatch bumf, ensure that “even countries that have never seen snowflakes will wait with excitement for the next snowfall.”
So, it turns out this is yet another dastardly plan from Swatch, “encouraging” MoonSwatchers to track a Cold Moon down before winter’s end, so as to not be reliant on monitoring Swiss snow reports to work out when future models will fall into stores.
