It's easy to understand the appeal of climbing into one of those toy vending machines with the claws -- they are filled to the brim with stuffed animals and gadgets. Who wouldn't want to go all Scrooge McDuck and play in them like a ball pit?
Sadly, we larger humans have no way of getting inside these magical machines designed to steal your money, but small children, that's another story entirely. Following in the footsteps of other brave children who have done much the same in the past few years, Colin Lambert down in Maryville Tenn. broke his way into a toddler's paradise.
He waited for the perfect moment to strike. His grandmother, Diane O'Neill, was distracted texting on her phone, giving him the perfect opportunity to crawl into the machine.
"All I could see was his feet. He had already crawled in," she told local station WBIR. "I grabbed his feet and he kicked my hand and got in. Climbed up over the glass partition and sat down in the toys."
Success! There is only one problem -- how does he get back out?
"My biggest fear was that he was going to climb back over and try to get back out," O'Neill said. "The plastic they had that held the toys in is cracked and broken in several places. I was afraid he was going to try to climb over and get hurt."
That's where the fire department comes in to save the day. Firefighters appeared to bust the boy out of his toy-filled prison in a matter of minutes, and even let the kid keep one of the toys for his trouble. All part of Lambert's plan, no doubt.
This happens way more than you might think. It's practically a trend now, with another case happening earlier this year and even more in the last couple of years. One firefighter rescuing a boy in 2010 said the kid was perfectly happy inside the machine playing with toys. Mom and dad? Not so much. That kid got away with not one, but two toys from the machine for free. Any toddlers reading this, I think you know what needs to be done.
