Toys For Tots

AFL’s Veterans Community will be giving to Toys for Tots

A program sponsored by the US Marines since 1947.

From 1947 through 2022, local Toys for Tots Coordinators have distributed 652 million toys to 291 million less fortunate American children.

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM

How Toys for Tots began

In 1947, the wife of a U.S. Marine Corps reservist handcrafted a doll and asked her husband to take it to an organization that would give it to a needy child for Christmas. Major (later Colonel) Bill Hendricks couldn’t find one, so at his wife’s urging and a group of Marine Reservists in Los Angeles started one. It was so successful, the Marine Corps adopted it in 1948 and it spread to Marine Corps Reserve units nationwide and received publicity from Hollywood celebrities (it didn’t hurt that Hendricks’s weekday job was head of Public Relations for Warner Brothers Studio).

In 1948, animator Walt Disney designed the Toys for Tots logo still in use today.

Starting in 1980, Toys for Tots began accepting only new toys. Three things precipitated this move: 1) Changes in defense that required more training for Marine Reservists, so they had less time to refurbish used toys; 2) Growing public awareness of safety and health issues with older toys; 3) A feeling that giving hand-me-down toys didn’t give underprivileged children the message Marines wanted to send them on Christmas Day.*

*Source: Toys for Tots Foundation

ITC, an AFL company, first became involved with Toys for Tots in 2018, when ITC employees donated hundreds of gifts to children in California. This year, in 2023, the AFL Veterans Community is expanding the opportunity to give to children in need to all AFL Veterans.