A Bronx toddler was discovered dead yesterday morning inside a plastic container, the apparent victim of a hide-and-seek game gone awry.

Police said 2-year-old Anthony Pena was found inside a barrel-shaped drum in his family ‘s apartment on Albany Crescent in Kingsbridge about 5:30 a.m. when his parents went to rouse him and his 4-year-old sister and 6-year-old brother.

According to police, Pena may have suffocated some time during the night while his parents, identified by neighbors as Rosa Lopez, 24, and Francisco Pena, 28, thought he was asleep.

It was not immediately clear how Pena became trapped in the barrel, although police said they believe the death was accidental.

In statements to police, the boy’s mother said she put her children to sleep at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, and they subsequently started playing hide-and-seek in the bedroom they share.

Sources also indicated that the children may have been imitating antics they saw on reruns of a popular Mexican television sitcom, “El Chavo del 8.” The show’s main character is an 8-year-old orphan who sleeps in a barrel.

Either way, police said, Pena apparently got stuck in the barrel after an older sibling snapped the lid shut. When the children got tired of playing, they went to sleep and forgot the toddler was in the barrel, police said.

Neighbors, however, said they heard various unusual shouts and noises coming from the family’s apartment during the night, in addition to loud music around midnight.

“I heard somebody screaming, but I thought it was a family issue,” a third-floor resident, Jyothi Mutyala, 28, said.

A woman who lives directly above the family, Ana Serrano, 47, said she heard arguing and banging in the children’s bedroom downstairs, and recalled that she stomped her feet on the floor to signal that they should be quiet.

According to the superintendent of the building, Manuel Santos, 58, the family had lived there about two years. Most of the building’s residents said they did not know the family well, although police reportedly had been called to break up loud and frequent parties at their apartment.

“They seemed to be happy kids,” a neighbor who lives across the hall, Teresa Perez, 35, said.

Ms. Perez said she saw the children, who often play in the hallway, sitting there yesterday morning with two adult relatives who were crying.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner’s office said an autopsy was scheduled for Friday.