A Tennessee toddler wiggled his way into a claw machine, where he got stuck and had to be rescued from amidst a pile of stuffed animals this week.
Colin Lambert, 18 months, evaded his grandmother’s attention just long enough to climb into the chute that normally carries stuffed animals to the machine’s winners.
Diane O’Neill said she looked down at a text for just a minute.
"All I could see was his feet 'cause he had already crawled in," she
told USA Today of her grandson's adventure into the claw machine. "I grabbed his feet and he kicked my hand and got in. He went in, he climbed up on the shelf and then he climbed over the glass partition and sat in the toys, and played with the toys.”
Although Colin was clearly happy with his circumstances, O’Neill told USA Today she was concerned about broken plastic pieces inside the machine that could have hurt the boy.
The machine was in a laundromat in Maryville, and fire department personnel were able to get him out in a matter of minutes, USA Today said. They let him pick a toy to keep.
Stories about kids crawling into the toy heaven of claw machines seem to pop up frequently. Earlier this year, a
missing 3-year-old boy was found in a bowling alley claw machine.
Babble blogger Molly Thornberg posted links to 10 videos on YouTube of children inside the claw machines.
“And HOW FUN would it be to crawl up into one of these and play! I mean, I always tried to stick my hand in and grab toys, but that didn’t work,” she joked. “Next time I’ll just heave-ho my toddler up there rather than wasting all of those quarters!”
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