Absolutely insane.
However, if I had a case of “deliberately breaking a toy” from a 7-year-old (which I’m sure I have!), I’d refuse to replace the toy and select several others to give to the poor. Longer-term impact than a spanking, AND gets some clutter out of the house.
On a totally different point, I wonder if this child’s parents are married?
I will give the benefit of the doubt to the father on this day. But I bet the intentional breaking of the toy was likely the last straw in a string of appalling behavior. As a kid, I got the belt for one of two reasons. Either one act was so horrifically heinous and obviously I knew better than (like throwing eggs at passing cars or lawn darts on the roof of the house). Or there was a series of misdeeds that required an attitude adjustment. One way or another, three wacks of a belt on ass usually get a kids attention. Welts or not, the kid will be just fine. This is no abuse.
That does seem to be a bit of overkill over a toy. It’s his toy, let him break it - doesn’t mean I have to replace it. I know my sons broke a few, I don’t think it was ever deliberate but my oldest got impatient a few times when the toy wouldn’t do ‘what it did on TV’ and it got thrown. “Now you have no toy at all, oh well...!”
I got a very few spankings, with Dad’s hand. The only one I remember is when I was about 4, I went to a neighbor’s house that I wasn’t supposed to (he was ‘weird’) with another little girl. Dad saw me coming out of the house and bam, I got it. He just didn’t hit us. My sons have rarely been spanked, my oldest is 20 and a Dean’s List college student, works and is totally respectful and polite, an all-around terrific young man. My youngest is 15 and well on his way to being the same as his brother. And none of us are criminals ;) My H on the other hand, was whipped regularly by his dad. His dad could be pretty mean when they were little. And H got into trouble with drugs as a teen, trouble in the Army, shoplifted....although that was all before I met him, it didn’t stop him from doing a lot of things he shouldn’t have.