The Smoke Of War, But Which?

A few days ago, I was gathering up the various bits of fluff that I use to indicate  units that have fired, and thinking about Huzzah.  I decided that it was time to upgrade, but how?

What looks better, the "toy" version with just paint or the fluff version?

 My first idea was just to get some sort of base to make the fluff (aka fibrefill) easier to deploy, control and collect during games. Since I had some spare foamcore on hand, I decided to use  that as a base and glue the fluff to it.

The fluffy prototype. 

However, while assembling them, it occurred to me that a painted version would be suggestive of the old painted toy soldier explosions  that were sometimes sold with sets of toy soldiers, especially painted flat and semiflat toy soldiers. They would also be easier to store and transport. Hmmmm...

One of the Toy Soldier version prototypes.

With "real" toy soldiers.

I'm used to fluff as smoke and have myself brainwashed to see it as "smoke" BUT to my surprise I kinda like the toy soldier look and feel of the painted one.

So....whaddiya think? Fuzzy or painted?
(yes I'm soliciting opinions)