! Crate

These boxes may cause something in the background to change.
Crash Bandicoot manual

! Crates, when struck, typically turn outline crates into other types of crates. Often, they form new iron crates, creating a bridge that allows the player to cross gaps, and/or regular crates containing Wumpa Fruit. Occasionally, they have other purposes, such as in The Lab, where they activate doors and platforms. With the exception of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, ! crates don't count toward the box count as they are indestructible.

There are many variants of the ! crate. In many games, there is a green variant- the nitro switch crate, used to detonate all nitro crates in a level. In Crash Nitro Kart and the Nitro-Fueled remake of Crash Team Racing there is a wooden variant which activates traps after being broken. In Crash Bash, there is a purple variant found in many Pogo Pandemonium mini-games that turn a player's squares into points. This variation also appears in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled as an alternate skin for the Iron Checkpoint Crate (albeit resembling a Basic Crate in that it appears to have a wooden texture). ! crates are also blue in the mobile version of Crash Twinsanity.