Imitater

The Imitater is a potato spud artist which can mimic any plant besides upgrades. It can be used to cut the recharge time of plants in half although it takes up a seed slot. It costs $30,000 to buy the seed packet from Crazy Dave at his shop.

Usage
After purchasing the Imitater, it appears on the lower right part of the plant selection screen when choosing your seeds. Selecting it brings up an overlay, asking which plant it shall imitate for the round. After selecting, it will take up a slot as the imitated plant in a melancholy gray.


 * Note: The Imitater cannot copy upgraded plants such as the Gloom-shroom or the Cob Cannon.

The Imitater, when planted, will appear as itself, but after a couple of seconds, transforms into its copied form. The copied form, aside from being in monochrome (although this is not the case in the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad versions) costs as much and behaves just like the original plant. Imitated explosives will explode, and Imitated Tall-nuts can still take loads of damage.

It is not necessary to choose the original seed packet as well, or to use the original version of the plant before using the Imitater version. There is no benefit to having only the Imitater or using it first, there is in fact a disadvantage to it, as the Imitater requires time to transform.

Suburban Almanac Entry
Imitater Imitaters let you use two of the same plant during a level! "I remember the Zombie Wars back in '76," says Imitater in a raspy, old-man's voice. "Back then, we didn't have all these fancy peashooters and jalapenos. All we had was guts. Guts and a spoon."

Strategy
The Imitater can be used to effectively halve the recharge time for the selected plant, assuming the copied plant was also selected.

Good candidates for Imitation:


 * Wall-nut
 * Tall-nut
 * Pumpkin
 * Potato Mine
 * Squash
 * Puff-shroom or Sea-shroom (on night levels the player is free to spam two free mushrooms at a time)
 * Jalapeno
 * Cherry Bomb
 * Doom-shroom
 * Kernel-pult (as two must be placed to get a Cob Cannon)

The only disadvantage to the Imitater is the time it takes to transform. When placed right in front of zombies, they may eat it before it finishes transforming. This is mainly a problem when using it to imitate explosive plants which are placed right into the middle of the group of zombies they're intended to destroy. It is not impossible to use effectively, but there is a risk that it will be eaten before it explodes.

Trivia

 * The Imitator is the only Gray Plant in the game.
 * The Imitator is the oldest plant in the game.
 * On the computer version, the Imitater, instead of appearing in the Almanac in the same spot as in the plant selection screen, appears as a small drawing in the upper left corner.
 * It is the only non-upgrade plant for sale in Crazy Dave's Twiddydinkies.
 * The Imitater can be planted on any place before turning into the copied plant (except on craters), which surfaces depending on what it is to transform into.
 * The Imitater, when flattened, will turn into the flat version of the copied plant, even with instants.
 * On the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad version, the Imitater turns into an exact replica, without the silver color.
 * There's also an "Imitater" version of the Football Zombie in the browser version.
 * The Imitater may also be related to a mime, as it is black and white and wears a beret.