For those who don’t know what pareidolia are, they are the phenomenon of perceiving images where none have been placed due to our mind associating shapes or patterns with faces or other things known to it. A simple example is the Man in the Moon, which makes the Moon look to some of us as if it had a sunk-eyed face. What are some interesting examples that you have experienced?
I was recently reminded of an interesting one from my childhood. It concerns the Miss Chiquita/Chiquita Banana mascot of the Chiquita fruit company. Today, this mascot, a small picture of which is on the logo that goes on stickers put on the fruit, is depicted as a Latin American woman with a hat that doubles as a fruit bowl. A memory I have from when I was probably 4 or 5, so circa 1984-5, was of seeing this sticker at the fruit section in the supermarket, but I didn’t recognize it for what it was supposed to be. I thought it was a gremlin or space alien or some such creature. He had pointy ears and was smiling and waving. Eventually, I realized that the sticker portrayed a woman (or more likely my father told me). As an adult, I wasn’t able to visualize this pareidolia as well. I could see how the hat could have looked like an eared face, but it just wasn’t that evident. I should note that the current version of the logo looks like this.
Recently, though, I found out that “Miss Chiquita” was originally drawn, not as a woman, but as an anthropomorphic banana modelled on Carmen Miranda. See this original 1940s commercial. As I have read, she only became a woman in 1987. I then recalled once seeing a version of the logo on a box when I was a little older, and wondering why Miss Chiquita’s facial features were simplistically rendered; now I realized that I had actually been looking at an older version (clearly after the newer version had been adopted) where she was a banana. A google search revealed (as they do) the version that would have made me perceive Miss Chiquita as a space alien. Please see here.
Here the illusion is very clear. The bananas at the top edges of the hat form the “ears”. The side of the bowl of the hat is a smiling mouth and the top of her banana head centered right above it could be a nose. The two round fruits at the top edge of the bowl are either eyes or eyebrows above the two smaller fruits below them. The ruffled sleeves could have been scaly skin. I would have probably perceived the simple face on the banana stalk that forms her body (which would have been a very small detail) not as a face, but as a cluster of medals or buttons.
There’s mine. What are some of yours?
