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Walmart has it at $34.97, in stock, sold by Walmart itself. Amazon has it at $34.99, also first-party, but is quoting delivery September 10 to 24. Same toy, two cents apart, and about three weeks of difference in when it turns up. Nobody is scalping it. If you want it now, Walmart is the one that ships.
Mark Rober has eighty-one million subscribers, which means that when his name goes on a toy, a very large number of children find out about it on the same afternoon. The Crunchinator is the biggest thing in the CrunchLabs toy line Moose Toys launched this year: a sealed chamber, a wrench handle, and enough mechanical advantage to flatten whatever you put inside it.
It's a genuinely good gift for the right kid and a genuinely disappointing one for a different kid, and the reviews are unusually clear about which is which. Here's where to get it, what it does, and the thing to understand before you spend thirty-five dollars.
Where To Buy The Crunchinator
Both national retailers have it first-party, at effectively the same price, and neither has a marketplace seller sitting on top of the listing. The only thing separating them is how fast it arrives.
| Where | Status | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| WalmartSold and shipped by Walmart. Rated 4.9 across 14 ratings there. | In Stock | $34.97ships now | Check Stock Status |
| AmazonSold by Amazon at list, but currently quoting a two to three week wait. | Backordered | $34.99Sep 10 to 24 | Check Stock Status |
| Elephant Toothpaste BlastThe other big one in the line, from Rober's most-watched experiment. Ships in days. | In Stock | $24.99rated 3.8 | Check Stock Status |
| Egg Drop ChallengeThe cheap way into the line, and the one that actually asks kids to build something. | In Stock | $14.97too new to rate | Check Stock Status |
If you go looking for this on crunchlabs.com, the Crunchinator page throws up a waitlist box telling you it sold out fast and to check back next year. Ignore it. CrunchLabs doesn't sell the toys directly at all, the page exists to point you at retailers, and that message is left over from an earlier promotion.
The other thing worth separating: CrunchLabs subscription boxes and CrunchLabs toys are two different businesses. The Build Box and Hack Pack are monthly engineering kits you assemble. The Crunchinator is a finished toy made by Moose Toys under licence, sold in shops. Buying one does not get you the other, and as the reviews below make clear, expecting the first and receiving the second is where most of the disappointment comes from.
A clear sealed chamber with a screw press running down through the middle of it and a wrench handle on the side. Load something in, crank the handle, and the plate comes down with roughly thirty times the force your arm is putting in. Three swappable plates change what the crush looks like, the mess stays inside, and the whole chamber rinses out in a sink.
What It Actually Does
Strip away the branding and it's a screw press, which is a genuinely old and genuinely clever bit of engineering. Moose spells the physics out on the box: turning the handle moves your hand a long way round while the screw inside travels a very short distance downward, and trading distance for force is what gives you the crushing power. The same trick runs car jacks and 3D printers.
The three plates are named and they do different jobs. Pressure Point is a single spike that punches through. Jagged Jaws is a row of teeth that shreds. Impact Wedge is a blade that splits. Swapping them changes the result on the same object, which is the closest the toy gets to having a mechanic rather than a single action.
Everything happens inside a sealed clear box, which is a better design decision than it sounds. It means the mess is contained, it means you can watch it happen from every angle, and it means the press only engages when the chamber is shut. There's also a mount on the top for a phone, because filming the crush is explicitly the point.
The One Thing To Know Before You Buy
Moose puts the honest version right on the packaging. One panel is headed "Original Inspiration: Viral Hydraulic Press Videos." Another explains that the machine works by screw and mechanical advantage.
Both are true, and the gap between them is where every unhappy review lives. This is a hand-cranked press sold on the aesthetic of an industrial hydraulic one. It will flatten a drinks can, split a piggy bank and mangle a small plastic toy. It will not do what a twenty-tonne press does to a bowling ball on YouTube, and if the child in question has watched a lot of those videos, that gap is going to register within about ten minutes.
The second thing, and it's related: it does one thing. There is no build step, no assembly, no experiment to run. It arrives finished, you crank the handle, it crushes. Whether that is worth thirty-five dollars depends entirely on which kid is opening it.
What Buyers Are Saying
It's at 4.1 out of 5 across 29 Amazon ratings and 4.9 across 14 at Walmart, and the Amazon split is the interesting one because it isn't a normal-looking curve.
Two thirds five stars, a fifth at one or two, and almost nothing in the middle.
"I can't think of a way for my kid to hurt themselves with this. The only way a clamping force can be applied is if the box is sealed which means no fingers can be pinched."
Amazon reviewer, 5 stars"There's an automatic clutch mechanism which prevents you from overtorquing the machine, but that system is disabled when unscrewing the jaws."
Amazon reviewer, 5 stars"He has been crushing coke cans left and right like crazy."
Amazon reviewer, 3 stars"It's a bunch of thick, cheap plastic and it crushes. only. thats it."
Amazon reviewer, 3 stars"It is built to mimic the viral hydraulic press videos, but does not use hydraulics."
Amazon reviewer, 2 stars"It was too small to crush a can, it couldn't crush really small plastic toys, it couldn't crush anything that was hard."
Amazon reviewer, 1 starOur Read On The Reviews
Notice who's writing the bad ones. They aren't people who dislike Mark Rober, they're the fans. "Our family loves Mark Rober and have subscribed to CrunchLab boxes for years, which only makes this product more disappointing." "Not the best crunch labs can do." "It's the first time I've been disappointed in a crunch labs item."
That's the split, and it's a supply-of-expectations problem rather than a quality one. Households already inside the CrunchLabs world are used to monthly kits you build, with a mechanism to understand and a thing to assemble at the end. The Crunchinator has none of that. Even the reviewer who called it a waste of plastic conceded, in the same breath, that "the build quality is really impressive." The object is fine. It just isn't a project.
The five-star reviews come from somewhere completely different. They're parents noticing the engineering that went into making it safe, and kids flattening drinks cans until the novelty runs out. One reviewer walks through the clutch mechanism and the keyed jaw fittings with obvious appreciation. Nobody in that group expected a build kit.
There's one genuine inconsistency worth flagging: one reviewer says it was too small to crush a can, another says their son has been crushing cans nonstop. Results depend on what you feed it and which plate is fitted, and there's an indicator that trips when the machine meets something it can't handle. Anything properly hard is out of scope.
Who It's For
- The kid watches hydraulic press and destruction videos and wants a turn.
- You want something a younger sibling can't get hurt on. The safety design is genuinely good.
- It's a shared activity. Filming the crush is half the toy and the phone mount says so.
- Eight to eleven. That's where the satisfaction lands hardest.
- You already subscribe to CrunchLabs. The people most let down by this are the existing fans.
- You want a build. Nothing here gets assembled, engineered or problem-solved.
- You're expecting real press power. It's a screw press, not hydraulics, and hard objects survive.
- You want the science to go deeper. The Egg Drop Challenge at $14.97 asks more of a kid.
Restock History
There's no shortage in the classic sense here, no resale market and nobody charging over list. What there is, is a supply line that's already showing strain in August.
The practical read: a first-party Amazon listing quoting a three-week delivery window in August is not a listing that copes well with December. If this is going under a tree, buying it in the next few weeks costs the same and removes the question entirely.
The Crunchinator FAQ
The Bottom Line: It's well built, it's cleverly made safe, and for a kid who wants to flatten things and film it, thirty-five dollars is fair. Go in knowing what it is: a finished single-purpose machine, not an engineering kit, and a screw press rather than the hydraulic monster the packaging is winking at. The people writing the one-star reviews are almost all CrunchLabs subscribers who expected a project. If that describes your household, the $14.97 Egg Drop Challenge will land better. If you're buying for a kid who just wants to crush a can, buy it from Walmart so it turns up this week.
