The Soldier’s Sparkplug

The Soldier’s Sparkplug is one of the many roboticised cosmetics added into TF2 during the Robotic Boogaloo update. It is, as its name suggest, a spark plug owned by the Soldier, which for some reason he kept in his mouth like a cigar. And also, said spark plug is smoking according to the TF2 Wiki.

Before we talk more about the narcotic car component, can we first talk about the cosmetics introduced in the update in general? To me, while some are pretty good, like Filamental and the Byte’d Beak, some are just… odd. Stuff like this and Electric Escorter on their own just seems weird and utterly random if you judge them by themselves, and only made some sense when you consider the general theme of the cosmetics that came up in this update and the cosmetic it’s based on. To be fair, it’s OK on Soldier because it has been established many times in the lore that he lost all his marbles, assuming he was sane to begin with. The guy’s nuttier than peanut butter.

I can’t really describe more about the Soldier’s Sparkplug than I already did in the first paragraph. It is a white spark plug smoking at the contacts that the Soldier smokes like a cigar. I am half-convinced Soldier does this because he heard the term “e-cigarette” and completely misunderstood what it means.

I’ll be honest, if you really want a cigar cosmetic for the Soldier, the Soldier’s Stogie, which the Sparkplug is based on,  is a far better option. At the time of writing it costs about 2 reclaimed more on backpack.tf. Either that, or get the Cuban Bristle Crisis and get a free beard with it.

However, there is one thing that this cosmetic does better than its other counterparts. It is the best at making the Soldier look like a complete loony. No sane person will be trying to smoke a spark plug, but no one will ever expect a person who fires rockets at his feet just to soar across the air to have a single shred of sanity left. Demoman regularly detonates explosives at his feet to do the same, but cut that guy some slack. He’s drunk almost 24/7, Soldier doesn’t have that excuse.

Off the top of my head, the Soldier’s Sparkplug will make a fantastic addition to the Dumpster Diver set, to round off the homeless scruffy off-the-meds look. Other than that, cosmetics like the Stainless Pot, Lieutenant Bites, or the Brain Bucket would achieve a similar effect. That, or facial hair like the Mistaken Movember. Show the world how deranged and unhinged from reality you really are, as you step out of the spawn room with something from Engineer’s scrap heap dangling at the corner of your mouth.

And I suppose if you want to, you can use it as a part of a sci-fi look by pretending that it’s a very futuristic cigar. In both cases, there really aren’t many cosmetics that complement that look, as most of Soldier’s cosmetics are military-themed. I suppose if you want to go for a certain look, it’ll be fine as it is rather cheap. But the Soldier’s Stogie is just a better cosmetic in most cases as it is a lot more versatile and goes with a lot of the Soldier’s cosmetics.