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About the Xmas Toy Drive
When I was a little kid I had two favorite toys... my legos and my diecast cars. I spent hours in the living room creating little fantasies. Good guys chasing bad guys, cops chasing thieves, races between my favorite Ferrari and Lamborghini, car shows with the hot rods. As I grew up I realized just how much my toy cars shaped my life.
It started when I was not quite two years old and was naming body styles of vehicles driving on the street outside my window. Now I run several automotive websites that allow me freedom to enjoy my life. I own vehicles that I enjoy driving and working on. Cars have been an outlet for creativity my entire life. I suppose that my first Matchbox and Hotwheels cars helped to shape this passion.
I came up with the idea in 2001 when I was running a Portland-based import racing website called Draglab. Recalling the fun I had with toy cars as a child I structured a competition between the two sites. Members would collect Hotwheels or Matchbox cars and donate them to Toys for Tots just before Christmas. I can't quite remember which website won that year, but we definitely had some fun and felt good about doing it.
Our first year had only two websites involved, ours and UrbanAsian, a Seattle-based import lifestyle website. That first year we didn't collect too many toys, but it got the ball rolling. The next year I couldn't run a follow-up because I had sold the website and didn't have a good channel to rally people through. But in 2003 the ScionLife community was growing quickly. We had less than 1000 members, but managed to collect almost 1000 toy cars. Eight other websites got involved and our grand total that year was over 8500 toys. 2004 had eleven websites collecting over 9000 toys, and 2005 saw thirteen participants and over 17,000 toys!
As of this writing the 2006 contest is still a few weeks away, but our goal is to get twenty websites to collectively gather over $15,000 in cash donations. The money will be used to buy toys that each website will drop at local charities. If you are interested in joining the fun then head over to our Join Us page.
Darren Seeman
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