Mascot Helmet

Appearance:

A felt and fabric mascot helmet, the sort used by the mascots of professional sports teams. Exaggerated features, oversized glassy plastic eyes, goofy as shit but the kids love it.

Unexpected Surprise:

The inside of the oversized muppet head is a full comm and surveillance full heads up display helmet, complete with SmartGun targeting system, and electronic peripheral sync capability.

But Why?

The first user of a cybernetic mascot head was a shadowrunner who went by the moniker of SugarMan, and typically cosplayed as the mascot of Sugarman Cereals, a vaguely mammalian creature that was mostly head, with spindly arms, wild hair, and too much energy. SugarMan did side and promo work, which let him approach targets while in costume, and then use the full host of electronic systems mounted in his giant costume head in a shockingly brazen manner. Eventually SugarMan would end up taking a contract where his element of surprise failed, and he was left in a giant muppet head while being shot at and that didn't turn out well for any party involved. Backpack sized implosion devices don't understand the concept of friend or foe, or limited collateral damage.

Who Now?

Intelligence Agencies love mascot helmets. A single goofball mascot near a place of interest can carry the same basic electronic systems as a modern surveillance vehicle. Several can form a network and relay data back through clandestine systems to a home base, even routing through smart devices rather than normal comms. Atlantic Federation Intelligence is infamous for routing their data streams through the most asinine systems, leading to them being incredibly efficient at it. One particularly instance involved Cyber Six running their data trunk around counter surveillance efforts by hacking a iBarista coffee machine the people being spied on were actively using.

Shadowrunners and corporate intelligence like mascot helmets for the same reason.