Like sands through the hourglass, scores of characters have come and gone from Days of Our Lives since its 1965 premiere. There have been heroines who never failed to accessorize with a halo, bad boys who seemed to have an aversion to shirts, patriarchs, patsies and everything in between.

But, of course, not all characters are created equal. So your friends at TVLine were reminded when we undertook the daunting task of ranking the soap’s 10 best of all time. We had to make some painful cuts along the way, dropping personalities that were good but not great, memorable but not impactful.

In the end, though, we arrived at a list that we suspect hope you’ll (mostly) agree with. Included in our picks for the cream of the crop are a protagonist who has changed identities as often as his clothes, a scamp who never met a plot she wouldn’t hatch and a supercouple whose omission would’ve been a CIN.

Ready to see how your favorites fared — and if they even made our list? Click on the gallery to the right (or go here for direct access), then hit the comments with the characters that you would have added to the mix.