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Given Mario’s reign as the king – or at least, like, Hand of the King or maybe Master of Coin – of the current pop culture nostalgia craze, it’s no wonder that we’ve seen a lot of Super Mario Bros. fan art over the years.

Most of it’s pretty great stuff, but few works of Mario fan art have required quite as much thankless dedication and time commitment as this recreation of the original Super Mario Bros. start screen recreated in an unusual medium. Can you guess what that medium is?

If you guessed toothpicks right off the bat, you’re right, and also possibly suffer from some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder or something, because how can anyone possibly imagine stacking literally thousands of toothpicks in just the right shape to accomplish something like this?

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To be precise, the Twitter user and toothpick art enthusiast responsible for the work, BB Korry, says it required exactly 140,000 toothpicks painstakingly stacked. Alas, to the disappointment of any readers who may have been thinking that BB Korry was some kind of toothpick-stacking wizard, the individual sticks are held together with glue. It’s pretty impressive and obviously leagues ahead of our fifth-grade toothpick bridge, regardless.

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So, how much did this brilliant work of nostalgic fan art cost our artist? BB Kory says that toothpicks, glue, spray paint and all, the whole thing set them back about US$100. But that’s nothing compared to the five whole days it took BB to build it singlehandedly. Man, when we think of how we spent our last five days, we can’t help but feel… Actually, let’s be honest, we spent it more productively than making a Mario Bros. sculpture out of damn toothpicks.

Source: Hamster Sokuhou
Photos: BB Korry via Twitter