Cry Baby – Melanie Martinez

Portal Parfums
Release Date – 2016

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Cry Baby by Melanie Martinez is a perfume I’ve mentioned here before, and one that has been discussed to death across almost every fragrance forum I’ve come across.

Part of its mystique comes from the fact that it was discontinued. In 2023, Melanie Martinez (the singer and creative force behind the scent) confirmed that the manufacturer had gone out of business. Cry Baby was gone.

And thus began the hysteria.

I came to know the fragrance at the height of this hysteria. The hype and speculation around it pulled me in, drawing me (a complete newbie to Melanie, her music, and the perfume itself) into its pink-peppered orbit.

I could not fathom what sort of juice this bottle contained, given that I was seeing it listed on eBay and reseller sites for hundreds, sometimes even thousands.

The sheer demand made me feel that I, too, ought to be joining the hunt. Surely anything so feverishly sought after had to be worthy of the acclaim.

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Cry Baby Returns

Fast forward to 2025, and Cry Baby returned by popular demand. Well, sort of. The formula was new.

With the manufacturer’s collapse came the loss of the original recipe, so this rerelease, despite wearing the same clothes and bearing the same name, was really only a recreation of its predecessor.

As soon as I saw it making the rounds again, I knew I had to get my nose on it. Never mind that the formula had changed; by then, the FOMO had already taken hold, and I was more than ready to be manipulated by marketing once again.

I ordered my 1ml sample and sat in wait.

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First Impressions

Of all the fragrances I have looked forward to (and there have been many), this one was up there with those I’ve been most excited to get my nose on.

Inside the vial sat a cloudy, milky pink liquid, so exactly the colour of strawberry milkshake that it bordered on the theatrical.

Tiny iridescent bubbles trembled on the surface, catching the light like little oil-slick pearls. 

These bubbles seemed less like chance than design, as though someone in the marketing department had set them there one by one with tweezers. We were off to a good start. 

The first spritz brought fizz: a bright, effervescent cloud that quickly swept away my expectations of strawberry milkshake.

Instead of curd or cream, I got tuck-shop sherbet, pink, sparkling, and lightly abrasive in a way that made my nose wrinkle and tingle.

I liked it instantly. The culprit behind the fizz was the fragrance’s powdery heart, notes that often lend that familiar dusty, cosmetic-powder edge. 

So far, this was proving far more interesting than I’d expected. It had a surprising amount of nuance, and for a celebrity fragrance, I was impressed to say the least.

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Girlhood Bottled

After the fizz had snapped, crackled and popped, the milky facets began to show, leaving behind a softer, smoother impression of strawberry milk.

Though it had mellowed, it still felt very much awake, retaining the tang of the fruit notes and the fizz of the powder. 

The strawberry note read as synthetic, though not in a way I necessarily disliked. It carried that pink, plasticised sweetness so often captured by the phrase “doll’s head”.

In fact, I suspect it was in reviews of this very fragrance that I first came across the phrase!

Pink, Actualised

In a few words, I’d describe the scent as pink actualised. If pink had a smell, this would almost certainly be it.

Cry Baby is sweet, powdery, and glossy in equal measure, the sort of fragrance I imagine might linger in the clouded wake of a fairy.

I found it comforting in a nostalgic sort of way, though I am not, by any stretch, a huge strawberry girl.

It brought to mind eating Swizzels Matlow sweets while rummaging through my mum’s cosmetics bag, all clumsy hands and first attempts at lipstick.

For what it’s worth, I did enjoy tapping into that more juvenile side of myself. It made a nice change from all the woody, smoky scents that try so hard to be sexy.

It was fun to experience, though I doubt I’d buy a full bottle, perhaps just a wee 10ml for novelty’s sake.

Viva la pink! 

7 out of 10 sniffs. 

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