... Smoothie Shells

Experts and hobbyists through the decades have pondered the existence of "smoothies," alleged original Wah Chang communicators with smooth-surfaced shells instead of the standard haircell texture.  The occasional screen cap seems to hint at this possibility, and a number of ME fakes and the occasional comm kit employ a smooth surface.  Now while conventional wisdom has long dismissed the notion of authentic smoothies, what evidence actually rules them out?  Let's take a look.

Inspection of the five survivors; Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta, and close-up caps of Gamma, Kappa and Eta (thus constituting 80% of all Wah comms)...

... reveal not just the same haircell texture but wherever possible the same left/right grain direction.  The other two not seen close enough, Iota and Theta, still have a surface appearance entirely consistent with those others.  No exceptions can be found in three years of episodes:

 

What we have observed, however, is how under certain lighting (especially outdoors) the fine haircell grain of the plastic can disappear into an apparent smooth sheen when the size of the image is reduced enough in size.  This is what we assume had been the main cause of whatever confusion once existed:

In summary, Wah (or whoever did the vacuforming for him) obviously paid close attention to this detail in certainly eight of the comms, and in full likelihood all ten.  In other words, "smoothies," while interesting, are altogether non-canon and inauthentic as best as can possibly be known today.

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