Once a fragrance becomes a bestseller, the sequels arrive like clockwork: Intense, Elixir, Parfum, Le Parfum, Extreme, and — our favourite — Intense Extreme. We counted one popular masculine line with eleven active flankers.
Why? Flankers are cheap to launch. The bottle mould exists, the marketing photos exist, and the loyal customer base pre-approves anything with the right name on it.
The problem is dilution: when everything is Intense, nothing is. Communities now need flowcharts to explain which version of a fragrance is "the good one," and half the answers are discontinued.
Our rule of thumb: the first flanker is usually worth trying, the third rarely, and by the fifth you're buying packaging. Spend the difference on a dupe of the original — poetic, somehow.