Here is a little post written by William Llewellyn,the writter of the Anabolic Reference Guide:
#1: The DEA is responsible for enforcing the Controlled Substances Act only. Without anabolics being Schedule I or falling under an analog drug act, each steroid is not on the DEA radar unless it is specifically on the Controlled Substances List first. The DEA are police if you will, and are not responsible for understanding such things as what defines a steroid.
The FDA enforces all general drug and cosmetic acts. These current OTC products are NOT natural substances and legal as per DSHEA. They would be considered "misbranded drugs". They ARE on the FDA radar. However, the FDA has no police force, and doesn't have a bunch of Walter O'Reilly's working for them, so they are very very slow to enforce their own laws.
From most companies, you can trust these products about as much as underground steroids, as the raw materials are probably coming from the same companies. Some are much better than others, of course.
None of these compounds was ever studied in humans. You are taking some risks in that regard, although the general effect of all are pretty well known from structure/animal assays.
#2: Most of the first generation products did rely on enzymes to convert to active steroids, unlike today's products. So they were generally much weaker. Still, they were steroidal products even if indirect ones, and I am going to have to disagree with your assessment of them. They worked very well for very many people. That market progressed a lot after "andro".
#3: It is difficult to say what is the best one as I am not taking these myself. I am 34 and am not taking such risks with my health anymore. You won't see me taking Dianabol either.
In general, I believe you would be much better suited just looking at these new compounds as methylated oral anabolic steroids. That is exactly what they are, and their benefits vs. risks should be similar to other steroids of similar character. Since most are highly anabolic, low androgen, non-aromatizable, their effects should be somewhat similar to winstrol, oral turanabol etc.
I have a book here by Julius Vida called Anabolic and Androgenic Agents. Among other things, it is a compilation of decades of steroid assay results. It lists many hundreds of different anabolic/androgenic steroids and their relative anabolic vs. androgenic potencies. It has all the basic drugs that you would recognize, and many hundreds you have never heard of because they were not developed as prescription steroid products. It makes no distinction when listing testosterone, methandrostenolone etc, because it isn't about law. It is simply a compilation for chemists studying steroids. I think this is important to understand.
All the OTC products sold today are in there too.
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I have ran it and it is one of the best 'ph's' I have ran to this point. 
