You might want to think about either blendshapes, and/or set driven keys.
So for blends, you could model an orange, then model a copy of it squashed, then key the blend to squash as the "squasher" squashes it....
For SDK's, pretty much the same, but the squash blend would be driven by the translate Y of the "squasher object".
Lemme know if this helps any
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com