It’s been almost three years since I posted about a kid getting stuck inside the claw, the game that gives cheap stuffed animals if you drop its mechanical claw at the correct angle. Happily, I can now report that the claw claimed another victim [click through to the story for the most awesome picture]:
Three-year-old Robert Moore tried to scoop out a stuffed replica of SpongeBob SquarePants with the vending machine’s plastic crane on Saturday, but had no luck on his first attempt.
While his grandmother, Fredricka Bierdemann, turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.
First, to call this a vending machine is a travesty. A vending machine is supposed to vend. The claw never gives. It only takes. And as these stories show, it takes more than quarters, it takes small children.
But what’s scary about this story is that it happened in Wisconsin. That’s where the claw snatched the kid in 2004, when I last wrote about this. Wisconsin is worried about same-sex marriage while the claw is snatching children. Seriously, this is finally a case where thinking of the children would be an appropriate rallying cry, and legislators are worried about the sex lives of adults. How many children must we sacrifice to the claw while we contemplate the supposed evils of a couple seeking to marry?
Hat tip: Boing Boing, where there are more claw goodness links.