The Most Wanted
Eau de Parfum, Azzaro (2021)

Wonderful fragrance here. Very smooth, lovely sweet toffee with just the right amount of spice. Then sweet amber takes over in the dry down. I like the performance as well, not too overpowering, good longevity. Good for evenings or cooler days. I would definitely buy again when needed.

Smells exactly like Wanted by Night, but there's some sickly sweetness going on in the otherwise nice spice mix that started taking over and ruined it.

Hey! Another amber/spicy scent! It's really very smooth and beautiful with strong performance. (Just not my fougère neighborhood where I like to hang; Macy's kindly sent me a sample.)

Smells a lot like Ultra Male mixed with 1 Million Parfum and a little bit of Wanted by Night. Obviously, this is meant to be a sweet compliment-magnet. There is some freshness to it which, if sprayed sparingly, could be good for daytime. However, this feels best suited to nighttime wears.

It's pretty loud on me even with minimal sprays.

The Mosted Wanted by Azzaro (2021) took me by surprise, as I really wasn't expecting to like this based on all the early complaints of it being a sugar bomb. The trend of the late 2010's and early 2020's towards men's fragrances in the designer space getting sweeter and sweeter still has many guys yearning for the days of green aromatics or even aquatic fresh tones, plus running away screaming and usually into the arms of overpriced niche brands offering yesteryear's mainstream tropes at a premium. Under this modus operandi, I was expecting claims of another sugarbomb being exactly that, but I was wrong. Make no mistake, The Most Wanted is in fact sweet, but no more or less sweet than the original Azzaro Wanted (2016), and actually less sweet than Wanted by Night (2018). My guess is that the absolutely horrid Wanted Tonic (2020) did so poorly (deservedly), that they've already swept it under the rug (no box stock at the nearby Macy's, the tester sitting unloved away from the display and under glass inaccessible), so this new one only a year later is taking Tonic's place on store shelves while Tonic gets flushed out to discounters and one day become someone's unicorn (I hope not). No listed perfumers for The Most Wanted, so I don't know who to credit (or blame if you dislike the stuff), but I must say this is the first flanker from the line I'd consider buying, as Wanted by Night was too sweet, and Tonic was well... something. The Most Wanted really just feels like a slightly darker and cooler weather take on Wanted, which makes it bizarre as a summer release, but oh well.

The key elements of the original Wanted seem to be here, which irks me because official listed notes only show cardamom, toffee, and amberwood. This laziness is a total joke to me, and the brand (as with many others doing the same one-note-per-tier trick) should be ashamed, as it says absolutely freaking nothing about the way the scent smells, and nothing about the scent smells like it is focused on cardamom, toffee, or amberwood, at all. What the opening does give you is a similar ginger and lemon flash as the original Wanted, slightly sweeter and rounder, with the cardamom adding pops of extra body to the spice so the ginger doesn't carry it alone. Cardamom was in the original too, but shared limelight with mint, honeysuckle, and just a host of things. Here, these extras if present are micro-dosed, because the DNA really doesn't change much outside maybe the cade oil not really showing up. Lavender from the original is also present, and the toffee really just smells like extra ethyl maltol "bubblegum sweetness" the original in known to have, making this rest between it and Wanted by Night. The base is where the biggest difference between The Most Wanted and OG Azzaro Wanted lies; gone is the massive ambroxan and karmawood/norlimbanol whoosh, the scratchiness of the latter, and the vetiver + ionones to give a similar feel to Bleu de Chanel (2010). Instead, we see the multipurpose amberwood base material alongside some tonka, plus some other creamy woodiness that could be one of several fancy new aromachems too, to make something pleasantly round. Wear time is about eight hours, with moderate sillage all around, with a scent that pushes versatility away from office use and more towards romantic or formal wear.

The Most Wanted can't quite replace Azzaro Wanted, but if you're already using the Wanted by Night flanker for its intended clubber purpose, this one can easily supplement the original Wanted as the dressed-up or cold-weather hefty boy variant. Wanted Tonic could have been the hot weather one if it was actually related to the Wanted DNA in some fashion and was actually, I don't know, an actually good fragrance, but you can't win them all. Maybe there will be a fresher "Wanted by Daylight" or "Wanted Dead or Alive" that can be the new summer or sporty scent which rounds out the collection of the modern urban cowboy looking to have a fragrance wardrobe full of bottles shaped like revolver chambers, so he can aim to please and shoot to thrill his way into the Compliments Corral, I guess. Either way, you won't really need to worry about the pine box they'll carry you out in smelling bad if you wear this to a duel at high noon and loose, that's for sure. Circling back, this could have almost been Wanted Noir if Azzaro was one for such nomenclature, and it is not a massive sugar bomb, so anyone saying that probably thinks the tiny puff of lemon in Acqua di Selva by Victor (1949) is sweet. Hand them a bottle of pure galbanum tincture and tell them to huff that, then be about your business none the lesser. Still, The Most Wanted does sit close enough to the original Wanted that it may be redundant, and it won't win any fans who didn't like the original entry to this line, so you have to know what you're in for when you go to test this in the first place. All in all, a nice flanker that offers a variation on a theme, but doesn't make nearly as much gunsmoke as some folks have made it out to. Just another day in Tombstone. Thumbs up