There are a multitude of ways to help others this time of year – whether it be giving to food pantries or donating your time or money to the many worthwhile charities in the area. An opportunity to help Toys for Tots is taking place Thursday, Dec. 11. The 14th Annual Happy Slapowitz Toy Bash will be held at 11 venues in Downtown Cape and feature 13 bands.
Ryan Eftink is one of the founders of the event and he stopped by the KRCU studios to tell us more about the event.
Woods: Why did you start the Toy Bash?
Eftink: Well, we started it 14 years ago and it happened to be whenever I just purchased a house and me and my roommates at the time were going to have a Christmas party. And we invited all our friends over and all our friends came over anyway and ate what we cooked and drank what we had in our refrigerators and never really thought that we'd get much out of them. So then we decided to make it for a cause and we told everyone we were having a Christmas party...bring a toy. You get to eat and drink free all night. And that first year we had over 100 people at my house. It was a good event. We raised a lot of toys and cash that night.
Woods: You probably can't count the number of kids that have been impacted by this but if you had to guess how many toys have been distributed over the years?
Eftink: If we had to guess I'd say we're probably at anywhere from $250-300,000 worth of toys that we've done over the years in the 14 years we've been doing it.
Woods: Are there a lot of kids who won't have a good Christmas if it weren't for Toys for Tots? Do you have a sense of that?
Eftink: It is. I've been involved several years now we help with the Marine Corps League. We donate our trailers from our business and we take the toys down to where they hand out the toys to the families that need the toys. You can just see the looks on the parents' faces so very thankful. One of my favorite moments was last year we were at Toys R Us buying the toys to donate to the Marines and this lady stopped us and she was there with 3 of her kids. And she said, "Excuse me sir, you guys are all wearing the same shirts. What is this? What are you guys doing?" I told her, "Well it's the Happy Slapowitz Toy Bash crew. We raise money and then every year we go to Toys R Us and we pick out the toys...we work hand in hand with Toys R Us on that and she said, "So, what are you doing exactly?" And I said, "All of these toys go to the Marine Corps for the Toys for Tots." She said, "Oh my gosh that is amazing." She reached into her purse and gave me $40. I said, "Ma'am, I appreciate it." She said, "You don't understand. I want to do this because last year I was on that list. I got the toys."
Woods: And that's the impact.
Eftink: Exactly...because then people that receive it turn around and give it back.
Woods: Any plans to grow it even bigger? I noticed on your materials that most of downtown is going to be involved in this.
Eftink: Oh yeah. I mean we like keeping it a downtown event because we love the community that's downtown and we like supporting them. We do want to keep on getting it larger and currently right now there's 11 locations involved. We've got a lot of downtown merchants that also help us out with sponsorships. The other thing I like telling people about, too, is we work hand in hand with the Marines on this. All of our toys that we collect goes through the Marine Corps League's Toys for Tots Drive. All of the toys stay here locally. They don't go out to some big organization and they get shipped all over the place. No, they stay right here and get sorted by people in the community just like you and I, put into bags for Bob and Jim and Suzie and all those fun little kids that don't necessarily have what we had when we grew up.
The 14th annual Happy Slapowitz Toy Bash takes place Thursday, Dec. 11 beginning at 6:00 p.m. in Downtown Cape Girardeau. Admission is one new toy, $10 or you can wear your 2015 Toy Bash T-shirt. There will also be raffle baskets at each location with items donated by sponsors. You can find out more on Facebook.
