#pestnut

Name: Pestnut and Elite Pestnut

Debut: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Happy very late Christmas! Yeah, I know. It’s been a couple weeks. Mod Hooligon makes no promises that content will be delivered in a timely fashion. Have some chestnuts! They’re already out of the spirit themselves, they aren’t even roasting on an open fire! Unless you want them to...?

Nah, let’s not burn the Pestnuts because they are lovely, even if they are pests! I mean, round, spiky, big ol’ eyes, every element of that is peak character design! Well, it’s peak character design to me at least!

Did you know that real-world chestnuts come in these really prickly pods? I don’t know how many people know this, because I don’t go around on the streets yelling at people about chestnuts. I would, but I’d need to clear out my schedule. That being said, I think it looks neat! It almost reminds me of sea urchins, which are...

Wait a second.

So Pestnut is a regular chestnut. Green, spiky pod, the word “nut” in the name, so it is in the clear here. However, Stronger Color Variation Elite Pestnut I found when scrolling around in the Echinoderms category on the Super Mario Wiki! (as all good people do!) What makes Pestnut a nut and Elite Pestnut an urchin? I mean, Elite Pestnut is found in water areas... is there a connection?

As it turns out, yes! In most foreign languages, excluding Spanish, an explicit connection is made to Elite Pestnut being a sea urchin, or at least some kind of echinoderm! And heck, even Spanish takes specific note to tell us this is a marine enemy! Clearly we are looking at convergent evolution here! Do you know that nature has evolved crabs from completely different crustaceans like, four times? It’s because crabs are a perfect animal and we all love them! But Mario must have that for the body shape that is “round spiky thing” because as we also know, sea urchins are also a perfect animal and we all love them.