Item Box

Item Boxes are boxes in the Mario Kart series. Item Boxes look like ? Blocks but are transparent and often blue, and in more recent games they have a iridescent checker board pattern. When a character passes through them, they will get a random item. These blocks also appear in Mario Tennis and Mario Power Tennis. They have appeared in all the Mario Kart games, except Super Mario Kart where they used ? Panels.

In the Mission Mode of Mario Kart DS, the player's task occasionally is to destroy a certain amount of Item Boxes (which often contain Mushrooms to give the driver a boost). There are also Fake Item Boxes and Double Item Boxes.

The name Item Box has another meaning in the Mario Kart series: It is also used for the small box at the top of the screen which shows the player his current item. In Mario Kart: Double Dash during the Grand-Prix mode, there are lots of item boxes appear and some are moving directly such as Mushroom City, Peach Beach, and much more. While in split-screen mode except for Battle Stages, item boxes are brighter and some of them are fewer than before. An Item Box appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It appears only as a sticker. It increases ice attack power by eight. The artwork shown in the sticker is from the Double Dash version of the Item Box.