Experts and hobbyists through the decades have pondered (or in the case of some forgeries even vouched for) 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 odd-ball curiosity comm kits and builds employ a smooth surface.  Now while conventional wisdom has long put to rest the notion of authentic smoothies, what evidence actually rules them out?  Let's take a look.

Modern photos and vintage screen caps in fact cannot confirm with mathematical certitude that Wah was fully consistent with his texture.  But inspection of four survivors; Alpha, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta, and close-up caps of Beta, Gamma, Kappa and Eta (constituting in total 80% of all Wah comms)...

... reveal not just the same haircell texture but the same left/right grain direction.  The other two not seen close enough yet, Iota and Theta, still have a surface appearance in screen caps 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 obviously paid very close attention to this one detail in at least eight of his comms (remember that would be both top and bottom shells done separately) without any hint of variation anywhere.  It can be concluded with exceedingly high confidence that this attention - and texture - extended to all.  In other words, "smoothies" are altogether non-canon and inauthentic as best as can possibly be known today.

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