You press a coin onto your friend's forehead and challenge them to wiggle it off without using their hands. They screw up their face and waggle their eyebrows for ages. The coin came off thirty seconds ago.
🌟 Level 1: Apprentice
⏱ 2 minutes to learn
🪙 Coins
🎒 Ages 5+
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
👶 Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.👶 Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Misdirection is deciding where people look. If you look at your right hand, your audience looks there too, and your left hand can do the secret. A question or a joke at the right moment moves attention just as well as a big gesture.
Can kids be magicians?
Yes. Plenty of professional magicians started as kids, and lots of kids perform at birthday parties, talent shows and school assemblies. You become a magician the moment you perform your first trick for somebody else.
You press a coin onto your friend's forehead and challenge them to wiggle it off without using their hands. They screw up their face and waggle their eyebrows for ages. The coin came off thirty seconds ago. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 5 to 10 (grades K–4th), takes 2 minutes to learn, and needs one thing you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.
The secret
Pressing hard for about ten seconds leaves a feeling behind. You take your hand and the coin away together, and your friend goes on feeling a coin that isn't there.
What you need
A coin
How to do it
Tell your friend you're going to test their forehead muscles. Ask them to sit still.
Press the coin firmly onto their forehead and count to ten out loud.
Take your hand away with the coin still in it, and slide it into your pocket.
Say: now wiggle it off, just with your eyebrows. No hands!
Let them waggle away for a bit, then open your hand and show them the coin.
Magic words to say
“Right. This is a serious scientific test of forehead strength. Hold still. Ready… set… wiggle!”
Pro tips
Do it to one person while everybody else watches. The audience sees the coin go, which is the whole joke.
Be kind about it. You stop as soon as they've had their laugh, never after.
It works brilliantly on grown-ups, who take it much more seriously than kids do.
If something goes wrong
If they feel the coin leave, there's nothing to save, so turn it into the real test: press it on again and see how long they can hold it there for real.
Safety notes
Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.
Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Needs a helper.
No fire, no flames and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the Magic Shop. Nothing ever goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear.
What kind of trick is this?
💨 Vanish. Something disappears. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches:Working with helpers. A helper should walk away feeling brilliant. Perform it and it counts towards the Coin Conjurer badge.
Questions about the forehead coin trick
What is misdirection?
Misdirection is deciding where people look. If you look at your right hand, your audience looks there too, and your left hand can do the secret. A question or a joke at the right moment moves attention just as well as a big gesture.
Can kids be magicians?
Yes. Plenty of professional magicians started as kids, and lots of kids perform at birthday parties, talent shows and school assemblies. You become a magician the moment you perform your first trick for somebody else.