That's not true at all. It was around way before that. Remember Manfred Hoeberl? Flex Wheeler's dramatic calf "growth" in 92-93 wasn't from Esiclene, that's for sure.
Are you talking about that pic of a Off season Flex with Lenda Murray and Paul Demayo---it was a ad for NPC clothing and Flex was wearing a white and black unitard. His calves did look extremely big, but I'm going with Escilene, because he said that he and Kevin Levrone were the biggest users of it. That was back in 1995- or 1996 Lenda Murray had a Halle Berry haircut. Chris Clark is credited with coming up with Synthol. Manfred was his guinea pig (probably), and then Ernie Taylor, Ernie first was getting noticed on the other side of the ocean back in 1996.
Flex never made any great strides in calf develop in 1992-1993, actually if you look at his calves at the 1993 Arnold ( I had posted a pic last year), you'll see that his calves are split and proportionate to his body. Shawn admitted on here that he came up with the calf implants, and Flex even joked about it. In Flex's "Hardbody" vid, he flex's a calf muscle, which has the normal look to it.
Flex admitted to using synthol towards the end of his career, the 1999 Olympia and the 2000 Arnold to be exact