Favorite MOTUC figure based on the vintage first wave?

[Battle Ram Man]

I'm not creating a poll for this - just pick your favorites and ideally explain why.

For reference, the vintage first wave included the following:

He-Man
Man-At-Arms
Stratos
Teela
Skeletor
Beast Man
Mer-Man
Zodac


My favorite for a long time has been Mer-Man. I love his color scheme, and he has some of the best shading in his musculature and armor of any figure to date. The two heads are both amazing - one of the few figures with two heads where I like both almost equally. He looks like he popped off the original 8-back artwork.

However, I recently got an original release Skeletor, with the open left hand. My example is particularly nice, with good, deep shading on the muscles and one of the nicest paint jobs I've seen on the face. He's giving Mer-Man a run for his money.

I'd have to say those two are tied for me. A close second would be Man-At-Arms. The attention to detail on his armor is particularly excellence, and I've come to really love the cardback colors. He feels like a deluxe figure.

Teela is beautiful. I have to ding a few points for the choice to use brown armor and brown boots. I feel red would have been more appropriate. Also dinged because her head sits too high.

Zodac is a cheap, simple figure, but again he's got great shading details and everything just comes together very nicely on him. For a plain figure he really shines, for me.

He-Man has always been disappointing to me. He doesn't capture the feel of the original - I lay the blame on his generic looking heroic face sculpt. It has none of the character of the vintage figure. His hair is a bit flat too. Once I get that extra Oo-Larr head, he'll probably shoot up on this list. I find his accessories disappointing too - they have less detail and heft than the original (at least on the ax and shield).

Beast Man is a bit disappointing too. I think the dark orange-brown they chose for him is unattractive. He needed to be a more vibrant orange. Vintage Beast Man is one of my favorites, but this one falls flat somehow.

Stratos just isn't exciting. I don't really blame the execution on the figure - he's just a bit boring compared to the other guys, IMO.

[Dark Angel]

Easily Man-at-Arms and Teela at the top, with Man-at-Arms taking it only because he was perfect right off the card, whereas I had to mod Teela's neck to get things working right and aesthetically pleasing.

Classics MAA gives me everything I ever wanted from the character as a kid - the mustache head, the extra weapons - he just looks like the badass I always knew he could be. The MAA Ihad as a kid had some kind of factory error on the arm - instead of a smooth finish, the plastic looked somewhat blistered and flaky. I never complained, I just made up my mind that these were his battle scars. The classics version finally gives me an MAA who looks like he could truly earn such scars.

Teela is beautiful and I am happy with the aesthetic choices (colors, etc.). However, she is missing a few things that would drive her over the top IMO, primarily a Texeira mini comic accurate, loose hair version. Blonde or strawberry blonde, I don't care - it just should have been in that package. Yes, we can bash and approximation of that version using the BG Teela head, but its not the same. Add the head/neck issue and she's just not top slot material.

Mer-Man is a distant third primarily due to the aformentioned paint ops and, gosh, that's just a nice, deep green plastic, isn't it? And, again, we got the both heads that we saw as kids.

The rest are kinda congregated together in fourth place. There is nothing wrong with any of them per se, but none of them light my fire straight off the card in "stock" form. Skeletor only truly engages me with the Alcala head...but again, that didn't come with the original release, did it?

Stratos takes last place, because YAWN.

[_RZ_]

Mer-Man for me- just an amazing figure. Perfect amount of detailing, accessories, paint. It's just a great figure.

[Mechanizor]

Mer-Man does it for me as well... And even though I like them all almost equally, I think Stratos takes the lowest rank in that group.

[Draego-Man]

Mer-Man. Easy.

[Toad]

I suppose if I have to pick a wave 1 figure, it would be He-Man. I think he is the best one out of the original 8. I think I am partial to the more human looking, flesh tone characters.

[Nemisythe]

I'd have to say Man At Arms. Simply because he had so much going on and truly is the amalgam of the barbarian and technological themes He-Man would represent as time went on.