How's this for someone who has ACTUAL experience with Mantis? I purchased many Mantis knives before I knew what a good knife was. I have to give Mantis some credit because without purchasing those knives I would have never (though maybe eventually) ended up at BladeForums. Upon arrival at BladeForums my eyes were opened up to the world of knives, so I made a few purchases. A Manix2 was purchased, a Leek was purchased and a Benchmade 755 was purchased. Those knives showed me that the Mantis knives I have are garbage and I've never looked back.
I still own these Mantis knives and will list them off for you, I can provide a picture if you really just don't believe me. Anyhow, I own the MT-9C Tough Tony, TA-2CM The Principal, MF-1B Gris, MF-4CM Chaos II, BK-1B Privateer, MU-6 Cyclops. Not one of these knives arrived sharp, I don't mean they didn't arrive hair whittling sharp, I mean I couldn't hack through a sheet of paper. None of them are very comfortable, ergonomics must not be a word Jared West is familiar with. The Cyclops doesn't even function like it should. If I wear it and give it a pull to engage the blade, the blade doesn't come out far enough to lock so I then have to use a second hand to lock the blade. The Tough Tony has a handle that is meant for a 2nd grader as far as size goes. I would never let a second grader handle it though because the lock fails just by putting pressure on the blade spine, not a spine whack, I mean when I push on the spine it disengages. It also hurts to hold for any length of time. The Gris could be an acceptable knife, I wrapped the handle with paracord and if it came with any kind of an edge I would probably use it, it's not that awful of a design. The only knife that I've purchased of Mantis that I actually thought was a cool new idea was the Principal. I don't think it was executed well but a fixed blade with the "tire tread" rubber insert actually provides a positive grip and I have not seen many if any fixed blades besides it that has grippy rubber as a handle insert/scale. It's pretty much G10 or micarta, and maybe theres a reason for that... The Chaos II is just a terribly designed hunk of metal, I really can't speak much about it because after I got it I regretted it and its never been out of the box since. The Privateer is another poor execution knife. It's extremely tiny, I though the choils were so it could fit like brass knuckles for punching or whatever, but the choils are so small that the only way I could use it is to have it up between my first two joints as opposed to knuckles which fit between your 2nd and 3rd joint. I think I briefly covered them all... now, can I get back to playing with my real knives?
For the record, Mantis will never again be purchased by me or anyone I know looking to buy knives.
