The Rodeo X Rigs Toy Drive is usually the last thing on our calendar every year, and it might be our favorite one.
It’s held at King Shocks headquarters in Garden Grove, California. Trucks fill the lot, people who only know each other through a screen finally shake hands, and everybody shows up with toys.
Putting faces to the usernames
That’s the part that makes this event different from a regular meet.
Isaiah Narisma from @fullmag_tundra said it better than we could:
Rodeo X Rigs is probably the best event going on in SoCal. It combines so many different aspects of the off-roading group. We’re able to meet everybody we see online in person, really put a face to the name, and talk to the people who directly support us. That’s super cool.
Most of our year happens through order screens and comment sections. One afternoon in a parking lot in December undoes a lot of that distance.
The toys are the point
Everything else is built around the drive itself. People bring what they can, the pile grows through the day, and it goes out to kids who’d otherwise have a thin holiday.
There’s no minimum and nobody’s counting. A small thing counts the same as a big one.
We saw plenty of kids carrying in toys they’d picked out themselves, which is probably the best version of this whole thing.
Thank you to the people who run it
Tacoma Beast and King Shocks put this together, and hosting a few hundred people and a mountain of toys is a lot more work than it looks from the outside.
Thanks to everybody who came out, and to everyone who’s supported us this year. We’ll see you at the next one.
