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Looking back, I agree with you.

I didn't mind some of the supervillains who appeared, but at the time I do remember thinking, 'Where's Electro?' or 'Why can't the Sinister Six show up here?'.

Slightly off-topic, I often wondered if SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP had any rules imposed on it. It seemed to be Namor and Doom for most of its run. Where were the likes of Goblin, Kingpin, Scorpion, etc? 

As for SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, it was clear to me (and maybe I was an exceptionally smart 9-12 year-old, but let's assume not) that it was just an excuse to give Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner--two very popular characters who just couldn't quite carry their own solo book--their own comic book (the first version of POWERMAN AND IRON FIST?) and that was fine with me!  I enjoyed the comic a lot--until they dropped the Sub-Mariner in favor of the Red Skull ("What th--!  I don't want to read a comic starring the Red Skull!") and then ultimately replace Doom with the Hate Monger ("Time to cancel!").  Somebody took the title literally and that ruined things.  Maybe Roy Thomas should have just called it SUB-MARINER AND DR. DOOM to safeguard it!

I see that the relatively short-lived series (including the two Giant-Size issues) had FIVE editors!  Roy Thomas started it with the high concept Giant-Size issues ("Let's give Namor and Doom their own double-sized comic!"), then went through Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Archie Goodwin with pretty good issues, but then ending up with Jim Salicrup editing the last few issues I hated.  (Thank you Grand Comics Database for clearing 40 year-old mysteries for me!)

I do think it should have been called something else. By the time I bought all the issues, and I did enjoy the storyline, I was disappointed that the majority were Doom and Namor. 

But I don't know how well the Strange Tales stories were received (although the fact that the Thing was added to the stories may be an indicator), so another Human Torch strip might not have been ideal.

I suspect that most fans would have been much happier if MTU did not have any regular "star", but had a lot of team ups that that they wanted. But I guess they figured the book needed a draw, and Spider-Man sure was that.

And as we saw after the fact, the Champions definitely did not pull as a "team up" book.

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When SECRET DEFENDERS made its debut (1992 or 1993, I think), a large part of the appeal for me was the rotation. Doctor Strange, at least for as long as I bought the book, was the "manager", but there were new and intriguing team-ups, i.e. Wolverine and Spider-Woman. Only reason I stopped buying the book is that there were no comic stores around and the local store couldn't always get it.

Predictability can be a good thing, but I'd welcome a team-up book (heroes or villains!) which had rotating and unexpected guest stars. I always wished DC would have done a super-villain team-up title. First issue could have been something like Lex Luthor and Riddler (have they ever teamed up?). Then perhaps we could have had something like Man-Bat and Black Manta. The unpredictability of it would have been exciting.

Edit: Actually it was his six issue Hulk run that got me to pick up Hulk every month after buying it somewhat sporadically before that. I went back to buying it sporadically after that, and Alpha Flight I dropped altogether after he left. I got all the Superman and Action comics he did and had never bought Superman before that. All the Superman issues I had were seventies issues given to me by a cousin. 

Now that I think about it, it was JB going to DC that made me start picking up more DC stuff. Before that I was only getting New Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes, but after Byrne's Superman that expanded to other stuff like the new Justice League and Suicide Squad both of which came out of Legends. I did have quite a few DC comics prior to that that my cousin had given me and always enjoyed the Justice League of America ones (especially the JSA cross-overs, most of which I only had one part of) but, like I said, other than New Teen Titans and Legion I wasn't buying any DC books until JB left Marvel for DC. All the other comics I was into before that were Marvel books. I became a much bigger DC fan after that and it was all due to John Byrne.