Sky-Blue Spiny

Sky-Blue Spinies are variants of Spinies that are found only deep underground, in the Pit of 100 Trials of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. They are thrown by Dark Lakitus and can be found on floors 61-70 of the dungeon. They are stronger than normal Spinies and attack by charging.

They highly resemble Spinies, except instead of red, their shells are blue. This gives them a resemblance to Buzzy Beetles, so much so that the German version of the game refers to them as "Käfer-Stachis", meaning "Buzzy Beetle Spinies". However, they lack the usual qualities of Buzzy Beetles, such as resilience to fire.

Unlike regular Spinies, which hatch from Spiny Eggs, Sky-Blue Spinies are said to hatch from "pipes" and are referred to in battle as Sky-Blue Pipes when they roll into a ball. However, the supposed "pipes" which spawn Sky-Blue Spinies bear no resemblance to the conventional pipes of the Mario series and instead appear as regular Spiny Eggs, blue in color. Their name is the result of a mistranslation: Spinies are referred to as ｢パイポ｣ Paipo in Japanese, which comes from a well-known Japanese folktale but can also be interpreted (incorrectly, in this case) as an approximation of the English "pipe" into Japanese katakana. While ｢パイポ｣ Paipo was correctly rendered as "Spiny Egg" elsewhere in the English script of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - namely, with regard to the standard species of Spiny fought in the game - the translation team seems to have overlooked the established convention with this sub-species, resulting in the "pipe" name.