I’ve never thought about what a prison would look like for a three-year-old. I guess it would include comfy blankets, nice pillows and likely plenty of soft stuffed toys. I mean, really, not a bad deal if you think about it. So when Queensland Police in Australia got a call about a child who had gotten himself inside of a Hello Kitty claw machine, they couldn’t help but smile as they made their way to rescue the imprisoned little boy.

When they arrived, they saw Ethan Hopper sitting inside the machine like he was king of Hello Kitty land. “He loves claw machines … As he always does, he opened up the flap to be an opportunist,”  said his father, Timothy Hopper. “Then, within a split second, he crawled into the machine, the door closed behind him.”

He stood up and realized what happened and he was king of the mountain.”

In a video posted on social media, you can see Ethan sitting happily among the color plush, not a care in the world. His parents and police officers worked on an idea to get the little boy out of the machine. When the officers realized the machine was made out of glass, they knew how to get Ethan out.

Ethan in the toy machine. Photo by Queensland Police

“Are you able to get him into that back corner?” an officer asked Hopper. The father said yes, and then got Ethan to move to the opposite side of the machine. “Ethan, cover your eyes, hide,” Hopper said just before a police officer broke one side of the machine’s glass window. After police shattered the glass and cleared a way for Ethan to get out, his dad reached in for him and carried him out and away from the game.

“You won a prize, which one do you want?” Hopper joked as his son smiled. Police said Ethan was only inside the machine for no more than 15 minutes. “When we got the call there was a bit of a smile in the car. Both [of us] as fathers, thinking what our boys would do,” Senior Constable Stuart Power said. “Kids are kids,” he added. “My boy’s 4 and I’m surprised he hasn’t done similar.”

Ethan sits in the back corner of the toy machine after officers broke the glass to get him out. Photo by Queensland Police

“Ethan and the Police: 1 Claw Machine: 0,” the police’s caption on X (formerly known as Twitter) read. “Police were called in to rescue the adventurous Ethan, who had crawled up into a toy machine at a Capalaba shopping center on Saturday.” The relieved dad said he had turned to talk to his other children for just a second, and that was all it took for Ethan to scramble into the machine.

Hopefully this will serve as a reminder of what mischief little ones can find in just a short moment. But Ethan made sure to reassure his dad that there wouldn’t be a repeat in the future. “Don’t worry, Dad, I won’t do it again,” Ethan said. Watch below for a look at this curious little boy’s adventures with Hello Kitty.

Sources: NBC Los Angeles | People