What is Spiral HQ?
As you first start the game it seems that HQ is made up of knights that oversee the young recruits and gives out missions to the players to explore the world and protect their allies. At other times you wonder why they are spending time creating costumes for their knights when they have no affect on combat. Recently with the sprite prize box I find myself wondering why they would be withholding sprites from knights just because of the colors. Surely they know that their knights would perform much better if they had multiple sprites to choose from or that it shouldn't matter if the young recruits get a different color sprite, HQ doesn't seem to care too much about our safety in the clockworks so long as we scrape on by they will continue to act more like a market and less like a military HQ.
From what I gather, promo items are for various degrees. The operations THWACK and ZAP were to get us into gremlin areas, but it was a selective mission. They didn't want to lose all their knights going in in case it didn't work, and in the long run, neither of them did work.
Some promos, such as node slime, were from experiments that turned out neato. So, they call us in for those. Others are to boost knight morale, such as blooming prize boxes.
If gear acts all the same, Spiral HQ is more interested in seeing how it works rather than just throwing every new prototype to the recruits. From what I can tell, the only things we are given in prize boxes are fully safe items that we can use effectively. A divine-themed Drakon needs to be tested to make sure it doesn't have a short circuit in its lifespan from the irregular color, and a snarby maskeraith needs to have the same combat abilities as a standard maskeraith in order to be available to the knights. If these sprites had irregular powers or abilities, you can bet that Spiral HQ would be likely to find a way for all knights to have one. However, they might be in limited supply (not all sprites turned into seraphynxes and all).
Just my thoughts.