The holiday spirit is alive and well in Downtown Fullerton, with small businesses coming together to show extra kindness to those in need. Two local toy drives held this year are providing a chance for the community to give back.

The Soliloquy Studio is hosting a toy drive located at 216 N. Malden Avenue in Fullerton. They’re holding the drive every Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 6 p.m. until Dec. 18. The studio’s toy drive idea came from the owner Alvaro Arias, who wanted the studio to have its own charitable effort. 

“Our gallery is mainly a community-centered gallery, so we like to be involved as much with the community as all the other businesses,” said Jamie-Kimberly Gonzalez, art gallery assistant at the Soliloquy Studio.

Gonzalez said the gallery is collecting unwrapped, unopened and undamaged toys valued at roughly $30 or less. While they accept bikes, they request that they be no more than $100, with the same above guidelines. The gallery will distribute the gifts to local organizations, where they will then be donated.

Another of these toy drives was hosted by Chris Gayer, co-founder of Barrel and Stave Pour House, located in Jaxon’s Chix Tenders. Gayer was driven to establish a stronger foundation for community giving during the holiday season. 

“We’re in tough economic times right now and there’s a lot of people that need some help right now,” Gayer said. 

Gayer was able to distribute 46 toy drive boxes to the community, ultimately filling about 41 of them. The donation box distribution ranged from the stores in the heart of downtown Fullerton to Placentia and La Habra. This year almost every business in the Downtown Fullerton area had a donation box for collections.

The final donation event for Barrel and Stave concluded this past weekend, featuring free photos with Santa Claus, a car show and gift giving. The turnout for the event was a success, with a couple hundred people showing up to support and give back. Gayer also shared that they had six local business owners and friends who volunteered for the event. 

Over 3,000 toys were donated, more than double the starting goal. According to Gayer, this many gifts proves to be more than enough toy donations to help at least 500 families.

The toys will be taken to the Fullerton Police Department to be counted and distributed. The toys will be distributed to the Adopt-A-Family program, the Orange County Healthcare Agency, the Fullerton School District and the Fullerton Woodcrest Association. 

With this being the first gift drive of its size that Gayer had hosted, they were unsure how many agencies the gifts could be donated to, a concern that turned out to be a non-issue. Rather, it seems there were so many gifts that there wasn’t enough room to store them all. 

“I need to go rent a U-Haul because there’s too many,” Gayer said.

Although the Barrel and Stave toy drive event has concluded, there are still opportunities to give back to the community. Support Local, a sponsor of Barrel and Stave’s toy drive, focuses on just that. While providing the holiday experience for families across the city, Support Local also aims to help community members stay afloat. 

Gayer originally joined Support Local during the pandemic. The group would hold dinners about once a month, with all of the proceeds supporting local business owners. 

“We’re all small businesses down here, so we don’t have the corporate money to stay afloat,” Gayer said. 

While the Fullerton Police Department still needs to count and distribute the gifts from the drive, Gayer is already looking toward the future. 

“Next year I just want to grow it a little more and snowball it and try to make it bigger, bigger and bigger,” Gayer said.

The outreach had made its way to Cal State Fullerton with Tuffy’s Toy Drive, which was open for donations at the men’s and women’s basketball games this past weekend.

This was the first year this event took on this scale of community outreach, with Gayer hoping to do it all again next year. With the drive doubling the initial starting goal, Gayer expressed his goal of 6,000 gifts next year. 

“It’s all about the community and the kids; that was the whole idea,” Gayer said.