Cardboard cutouts can be a fun thing for an event, doesn't matter if it's for kids or for adults. You can put your face inside a hole and become an animal, a character from your favorite franchise, or just use it as an opportunity for a silly photo op. Unfortunately, not all cutouts come out anatomically correct.
Or maybe, for our laughing sake, fortunately? This selection of weird and laughable face cutouts from our listmakers is proof that this is an art, too, and that designers should approach it with artistry and care. So scroll down the list, dear panda, and upvote your favorite entries.
#1 This Cardboard Shrek
Image credits: TomtheFake
#2 So Much Nonsense Out There
Image credits: kareng7630
#3 Horrible Cutout
Image credits: Imnotalreadydeadyet
Sticking your face in a cutout and taking a picture is a staple at carnivals, birthdays or other events. The classics are the muscle man or a woman in a bathing suit, but nowadays you can find almost any type of cutout.
What's interesting is that these pieces of cardboard or wood have a much more sophisticated name. "Comic foregrounds" is the official term, bestowed upon the pieces by their original creator Cassius "Cash" Coolidge.
#4 Face Cutout Board For Terese's Bridal Shower
Image credits: partyanddesignco
#5 Face In A Hole At Mr. Toilet House In Suwon, Korea
Image credits: face_in_hole_yuko
#6 I Have Always Wanted To Be A Horse's Back
Image credits: clodet_s
If you've ever seen the famous Dogs Playing Poker paintings, you've probably heard of Coolidge. He was a self-taught artist who also painted cartoons and taught penmanship. His paintings depicting dogs in human situations are best-known today, and he is most likely the inventor of that motif.
But let's come back to the comic foregrounds. He received a patent for "Processes of Taking Photographic Pictures" on April 14, 1974. The patent reads: "The nature of my invention consists in a process of taking a photograph or other picture of a person's head large on a miniature body."
#7 Ever Wanted To Become A Flip-Flop?
Image credits: tuckertnoodle
#8 The Position Of These Cutouts
Image credits: cpredo
#9 Interesting Artwork
Image credits: nikki_967
Joel Lewis describes Coolidge's invention as "carnival cutouts." "The device was a painted wooden facade featuring a colorful character in an outlandish situation with a hole where the head should be." A person could stick their head into the hole and a photographer would capture the image for posterity.
#10 This Face Hole Thing
Image credits: hugh-r-man
#11 Alright Kids, Who Wants To Be A Severed Head With Elsa And Olaf?
Image credits: sfwaltaccount
#12 Yes, I Love Being An Eye
Image credits: ameliainniter
The most popular iterations of the genre were "a weightlifting hunk," a "bathing beauty," a "swimmer perilously clenched in the mouth of a shark" or a "fat man in a bathing suit." Yet Coolidge penned over 200 drawings of possible characters for beachgoers to get photographed as.
#13 Totally Sleighed It
Image credits: alilorae
#14 Surfing Santa
Image credits: zo171016oz
#15 "Yeah, Whatever, Kids Are Stupid Anyway"
Image credits: EpriLeK
In many of the drawings, Coolidge used images of animals. There's a human head with the body of a monkey among his sketches. Human heads disassociated from the human body seemed to interest Coolidge in general. There are many sketches depicting severed heads; in one of them, a head is even served on a platter.
#16 Anyone Wanna Take A Picture With Their Face As A Bird’s Chest?
Image credits: emmue
#17 This Isn't How Animal Faces Work, I'm Sure
Image credits: shancathraff
#18 This Is One Of Those Cardboard Character Cutouts With A Hole In Them, So That Kids Can Stick Their Heads In It And Be The Character. In This Case, You Can Be The Bird's Eye
Image credits: lilpickle321
In many of Coolidge's other sketches, the characters are simply vignettes of simple everyday life. Jordan Beer and Albert Narah suggest that it wasn't the imaginative setting that attracted customers. "It was the possibility of memorializing the act of being represented itself – of recording one’s own re-creation as an image," they write.
#19 Always Wanted To Be A Zebra-Donkey
Image credits: magnuschhan
#20 This Cutout My Local Japanese Government Gave Me To Illustrate And Warn About What Can Fit In A Baby's Mouth
Image credits: daidougei
#21 Redcar, One Place We Will Never Go Again. What Are The Other Two Holes For, By The Way?
Image credits: lucyrosegoodwin
The photo stand-in we know nowadays actually predates Coolidge's design. Yet he is still credited as the inventor of the comic foregrounds. Coolidge acknowledges this in his patent, but his successful marketing is probably the reason why today we know him as the father of photo stand-ins.
#22 Face In A Hole In Front Of Manatee Tour Office In Florida, US. At The Entrance Of Manatee Tour Center
Image credits: face_in_hole_yuko
#23 Photo Cutout Board At My Local Fair. Just, What?
Image credits: zeropointninerepeat
#24 This Horrible Cardboard Cutout
Image credits: Leafs5
Tourist attractions in 19th-century Egypt are somewhat similar to what we today understand as photo stand-ins. They weren't particularly created or painted for that purpose, but rather were existing historical artifacts. A hole would be in the place of a face in a sarcophagus and tourists could stick their faces in it for a picture. One example is the Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand posing as a mummy in Cairo in 1984.
#25 Face In A Hole At Kimchi-Kan In Seoul, Korea
Image credits: face_in_hole_yuko
#26 Hmm, Interesting One
Image credits: little_star_sterling
#27 Hmmm, Ok
Image credits: sar_ahmichelle
Another example of early photo stand-ins is seen in the pictures taken by photographers Pascal Sebah and Émile Béchard in Cairo in the 1870s. It also features a man and a woman putting their faces in a sarcophagus, replicating the look of a mummy.
#28 Not All Characters Work As Cardboard Cutouts
Image credits: matthewc20090
#29 Face In A Hole At Gelarto Rosa In Front Of The Saint Stephen Basilica In Budapest, Hungary
Image credits: face_in_hole_yuko
#30 What's Wrong With A Child Wearing It On His Face?
Image credits: kanikama_kook
I wonder how many people were disappointed by the poor penmanship of the failed attempts at artistry from this list. In a way, a photo stand-in gone wrong is an unforgettable souvenir in itself. A cardboard cutout might be enticing because of its absurdity as well. So let us know which cutout fails you liked the best, pandas. Upvote your favorites!
#31 The Position Of This Hole For Your Head Was Put In
Image credits: irrelevantjunk
#32 This “Put Your Face Here And Take A Picture” Cardboard
Image credits: porrabelo
#33 Cutout Photo Standee Gone Wrong
Image credits: Sciencepatel
#34 This Is Just Weird
Image credits: mortenunderbjergg
#35 That Isn’t How A Face Works
Image credits: Epicdude42069
#36 Um, What Exactly Am I Supposed To Fit In Those Cutouts? (Hand For Scale)
Image credits: aarogar
#37 I Surely Do Look Like A Fish
Image credits: AffeDaBoss
#38 Our Local Wildlife Shelter Has A Weird Idea About How Photo Cutouts Are Built
Image credits: DrSuchong
#39 These Horrible "Your Face Here" Cutouts
Image credits: orkdoop
#40 Is This How Faces Work, Really?
Image credits: caitlinl0ri
#41 Face Cutouts Done Wrong
Image credits: MayurBhat
#42 I Went Into A Place Where Only Children Were Taking Pictures And Snapped. Even If You Wake Up Without Makeup, If There's A Face Hole, I'll Take A Photo
Image credits: face_in_hole_yuko
#43 This Cardboard Cutout Makes Me Want To Commit A Hate Crime
Image credits: MikeMadigan
#44 Eaten By A Crazy Bear, I Suppose?
Image credits: kchu12
#45 Holes For Faces Not Where The Faces Are
Image credits: Countryk4t
#46 Yes That Is How Faces Work
Image credits: NoU_14
#47 This Wheelchair-Accessible "Put Your Face In The Hole" Photo-Stand
Image credits: CedricCSCFL
#48 Butterfly Arc
Image credits: meneghessogiovanna
#49 What Does This Even Mean?
Image credits: hayyeager
#50 Why Does This Reindeer Have 2 Smiles?
Image credits: random_horse69
