Pencil

Lore & Background

In the sprawling multiverse of Smash Bros., items from every conceivable reality spill into the battlefield. The Pencil, for all its mundanity, fits right into that chaos—a school-supply-grade projectile from some ordinary world, dropped into a colosseum where gods and monsters trade blows. It doesn't carry the narrative weight of a Master Sword or the kinetic fury of a Bowser bomb. It simply is, a small yellow cylinder with a graphite core, waiting to be flicked by a passing fighter.

What makes the Pencil charming in the broader context of the series is its honesty. The item pool in Smash Bros. ranges from the absurdly powerful to the comically weak, and the Pencil sits firmly in the latter category. It's the item equivalent of a shrug. In a game where a single well-timed item can swing a stock, the Pencil offers a gentle nudge, a small tip of graphite that might chip a sliver of health or nudge an opponent half a pixel off the edge. It asks nothing of the player and promises even less.

Fans who collect and catalog every item in the series often include the Pencil in their runs with a wry smile, acknowledging it as the series' quiet joke. It's the reminder that not every object in this multiverse needs to be legendary. Sometimes a thing is just a thing, and that's enough.

Reader's Guide

The Pencil is a small-size throwable, meaning any character can pick it up and carry it alongside up to two other small items. When thrown, it travels in a gentle arc, bounces off walls and the floor a few times, and then fades. Its hitbox is tiny and its damage output is among the lowest in the item pool—think single-digit percentages at best, enough to chip a sliver off a full-health opponent or provide a very soft edge-guard nudge.

In practice, the Pencil is almost never a strategic choice. In competitive play, item settings are almost always locked to exclude it, and even in casual or all-items modes, players will grab it only because it's the closest thing available. Its bounce behavior is predictable and slow, so it rarely catches opponents off guard. The one niche where it technically matters is in extremely tight edge situations where any hit, however small, could tip a stock, but even then a well-placed neutral attack would outperform it.

For a new player encountering it for the first time: pick it up, throw it, watch it bounce harmlessly, and move on. It's the item pool's equivalent of a pebble. For a veteran, it's a reminder that the game's item system includes a full spectrum, and that spectrum has a floor.

Did You Know?

• Because it is classified as a small item, the Pencil can be held simultaneously with up to two other small items, letting a character carry a pencil, a Poké Ball, and a wrench at the same time.
• In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Pencil was one of the many small throwables that could be stacked, making it a common sight in all-items free-for-all matches.
• The Pencil's damage is so low that it is effectively incapable of knocking back a full-health opponent, even on a direct hit at close range.
• Despite its weakness, the Pencil still registers as a hit for the purposes of breakable blocks and certain stage hazards, making it a very slow and very gentle way to clear a path.