Toddler climbs into vending machine

Shoppers watched on - most of them trying to control their laughter - as little Lachlan Stevens grinned at them from inside the toy vending machine.

For a few moments the toddler was just another plush teddy bear waiting to be picked up by the overhead claws. He had crawled up the prize chute through a “cat flap” and was quite happy to be stuck in the glass box for the half hour it took to get him out.

Sue Stevens said she had turned her back for “one second” when her son went missing in Centro Gympie shopping centre in Australia on Saturday. “I turned around and he was gone and then I looked over at the toy machine and there he was on the inside,” she said. “I couldn't believe he got in there.”



Mrs Stevens said she found the incident funnier now than at the time. “People were joking about trying to get him out with the claw but I wasn't in a very laughing mood.”

Centro security called the owner of the Toy Story crane machines and arranged for someone to get Lachlan out. Mrs Stevens said they were lucky to locate the only person with keys to the machine. “There was a guy from Brisbane at the shopping centre who just happened to be there that day,” she said.

When the man opened the machine and freed the boy, everyone said he should give him a toy but his mother refused. “He definitely didn't get a toy,” she said “They did try to give him one but I said don't you dare - he'll do it again.”