Not actually a Panther movie?

If that's your opinion far be it to convince you otherwise. It also has Cato, Dreyfuss, and other trademarks. Literally, it is not a PP movie. Would it be right to exclude it from the collection however? It would be a shame for someone not to see it because it was not identical to the others. It became a Clouseau movie after Edwards came in and reworked it after production started.

Technically, no, but then I think they often tried to hard to fit the diamond into the plots. Revenge didn't have the diamond either. However, from a formula standpoint it's far closer to the others than the original.

This is where most of Clouseau's more outlandish characteristics were established. Also, the supporting characters debuted here. In a lot of ways, it's the real first movie in the series since the Clousau of the original wasn't the star and was a far more generic character.

None of these movies are 'panther-movies' or even 'Panther-movies'.

These movies are never about panthers. They're originally supposed to be about a diamond, then they change into being about an inspector called 'Closeau', while often having the words 'The Pink Panther' in the title somewhere, regardless of if has anything to do with the Pink Panther-named diamond or not.

This movie, in any case, is just as 'The Pink Panther'-movie as ANY, and probably more than most, so I don't see your point in any case.

Heck, The Pink Panther is barely a Pink Panther move. Notice the release dates. The concept of a Pink Panther series only happened eleven years on with Return of.