I'm sure a lot of people have seen the "Pie Face" game which is becoming quite popular.
Its a game where you put a bit of squirty cream on a plastic hand, put your face in a hole in a piece of card, twist the handle and you may or may not get a "pie" in the face.

Looks fun, except for the pitifully small "pie", which looks like it generally ends up just leaving a small amount of squirty cream on your nose.

My question is, has anyone on here tried it? And if so, have you tried the obvious modificaiton of putting a paper plate on it with a larger amount of cream and maybe something else? Does it work or is the spring too weak?

I'd assume the spring is too weak to do a whole plate and cream. If it wasn't then a small pile of cream would mean that the spring would break your nose hitting you if it can lift a pie xD

I would imagine someone could take the blueprint of preface and make it on a larger scale. I've thought about a "pie pod" for years and how to make one. I would imagine a bar that runs horizontally would stop the arm from actually smacking the face and cause the pie to launch into the face.

Use a rat trap to fling the pie...just kiddin! lol
But in all seriousness, you would likely just need to find a spring with the right resistance.

I've had a rough idea for a catapult setup involving a badminton racket, coat hanger and cardboard tube that would sit outside a tub, which in turn is protected by a towel or two where the racket hits its edge. The payload gets launched when a string tied to the racket is pulled either manually or via gravity. Don't have all the materials at the moment so I don't know how mechanically sound it is

Jimmy Fallon has the perfect "Pie Face" set-up on The Tonight Show.
https://youtu.be/PG-AK5fawJI

I have Pie Face, and I can confirm it is too weak to launch full sized pies.

Jimmy Fallon's rig is made by Aquaventronics, and you can order one for yourself, but they're pretty expensive. Also, they're rig is only strong enough to bring a light pie up to the face hole, and they won't modify it to launch heavy pies any distance. I asked.

If you've any skill at engineering, and can find/make the components, you should be able to rig up a proper catapult using bungee cords instead of springs, but the process is likely to be quite involved.

btw, I once tried to make a pie catapult using a rat trap, tape and some rulers. The result was a chaotic mess, but at least I managed to avoid hurting myself.