Villains cooler than the good guys...

[acroyear]

I know there are some exceptions to the rule, but looking at all the toy lines, the bad guys were generally cooler looking than the good guys.

Baron Karza, War Duke, Micronaut/Microman Acroyears, Micronaut Aliens, the original Zartan, Destro, some of the He Man baddies, Cobra figures, Vader, Boba Fett, etc. etc. etc.

I came around to this revelation when I was going through my childhood toys. I had more bad guys than good guys.

[vaderschild]

i agree the bad guys and the generally dark side are much better figures in general.
My favorite figures mainly come from the bad guys.
You cant beat a nice tri-logo boba fett imo

[proteus]

yep-villains are always more interesting - i guess its because the villain has to look mean and generally scary theyre the ones with all the spikes and stuff. the heores tend to be quite boring.
darth vader was a bazillion times better than luke skywalker.

[jongernaut]

I've always felt like the hero of any series should be bad-ass enough to take on multiple foes at once, and that the more awesome the villain looks, the more awesome the hero must be to defeat him.

[Ebessan]

Since I was a little kid, I've thought this about 99% of action figure lines. Some series I'd only buy the bad guys simply on appearance. Menacing is always cooler. Most good-guy characters are too interchangeable.

[bowspearer]

I think what it came from was that alot of the writers in the 80s had next to no restrictions on them, so they had free reign to write interesting stories. Also their mandate was to paint toys in the best possible light, which meant actually making bad guys likeable, which is harder to do generally than making good guys likeable. The end result is that because the bad guys were so likable and because it's so unexpected by is, the villains wind up being even more memorable. At least that's my theory anyway.