Toy Time has helped provide toys for Christmas for children who might not otherwise have one for 30 years, while also offering families the opportunity to sell and buy gently used toys through a consignment sale.
It all began with a toy giveaway and a single mother.
Ami Pitt, Combined Community Services Project Independence and Hand-Up case manager, recalled the first year of the annual event in an interview today.

      

“The first year, I had just had a baby. I was a single mother of two - so now three - and things were a bit of a crisis for me. So I had gone into Combined Community Services and Heartline, they were in the same building together, and I had gone in there and was a bit bewildered about what I was going to do. I wasn’t expecting to be in that situation. And, they enrolled me in Project Independence, which I’m now a case manager for Project Independence with CCS,” she said.
That was a bit concerning to her, but they got her to take placement tests and to go to college. Come December, however, they realized her address was “wonky.” She had a Pierceton address but lived in Noble County at that time, so she couldn’t participate in Project Independence because the program was specific to Kosciusko County.
Marty Courtney was the director at the time. “I think, just so she could keep her eyes on me, she called and said, ‘Hey, would you do a toy giveaway for us? Will you run it for me?’ And I said sure,” Pitt stated.
She just had her daughter Rissa a couple weeks before.
“Come December, we did a toy giveaway. I’m not sure where the new toys came from, but there were a couple ladies in our community - Jane Smoker and Janice Workman - who did a toy consignment sale, and they had done it for several years. I always came to their sale because it was a great place to get Christmas toys for my children, being a single mom,” Pitt said.
The toys Smoker and Workman ended up not selling, they gave to Pitt for the toy giveaway, which was at the fairgrounds as the fairgrounds donated the building for the giveaway.
“They’ve donated the building every year for 30 years,” she said.
Pitt had new toys and some used toys, and they ended up providing a Christmas for about 37 children that first year.
“Which was wonderful,” she said. “I really don’t know how CCS handled that, I just ran the event for them. And then here I am, 30 years later, and we’re still doing it. And it’s just grown a little bit now.”
After Smoker and Workman decided they didn’t want to do the toy consignment sale anymore as their children had all grown up, they asked Pitt if she wanted to do it.
“They had done it to make some extra Christmas money for their families, which is great. But when they asked me, I thought, ‘Oh, well wait a minute. If I do a toy sale, then the things that don’t sell, we could rehome as Christmas gifts, but the money we make from the sale, we could use to buy the new toys,’” she recalled.
Over the years, Toys for Tots came in and provided an allotment of toys. ABATE (American Bikers Aimed Toward Education) has provided toys for an estimate 27 years, Pitt said, including baby and teen items and bicycles.
So now with the money made from the consignment sale; help from Toys for Tots and ABATE; plus all the other helpers like the fairgrounds providing the building, Staffords Solid Waste dumping the dumpster for them and Meijer donating supplies, between 1,600 to 1,700 children - from about 500 to 600 families - are now provided with toys for Christmas.
“We don’t want children to come (to the event). We want mom or dad or guardian or grandparent, whoever has the children, to come and get the toys and put them under your tree so that they’re there for Christmas morning or whenever you observe Christmas,” Pitt said.
Toy Time has changed a lot over its 30 years in that it’s grown and they’ve added the toy sale to the toy giveaway so that it’s self-sustaining.
“We end up with around 200 families in the toy consignment sale, so it’s like a 200-family garage sale with nothing but toys or children’s items,” she said.
Thursday, Dec. 14, is the last day to drop off good-quality toys for the consignment sale. Drop them off between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the fairgrounds.
Friday night, consignors get to shop early. “If they brought toys to sell, they get to come and do the first shopping,” Pitt said.
Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. is the public toy sale.
“A misconception is that the sale is for people who are having a bit of a financial struggle. Well, that’s true in that we have great prices and it’s a great place to come shop, but I need people with money to come buy these toys! So it’s not just for people having to struggle. The sale is a public toy sale, and as today we’re probably right around 15,000 toys right now, but I haven’t counted today. But typically, we end up with about 20,000 toys for sale,” Pitt stated, adding that kids don’t care if a toy is new or not.
On Monday, the building gets flipped in preparation for the toy giveaway.
The CCS Toy Giveaway is Tuesday, Dec. 19 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 20 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“This year, I am going to need some extra information on our intake forms. It’s nothing that you couldn’t answer verbally. You should know the answers to the questions if you’re coming in for your children. You don’t have to do an early sign-up, nothing like that. You just come to the building and we’ll have a table set up and when you come up, we’ll have some intake people who will ask you a few questions about your family and that’s it,” Pitt said.
Any item that doesn’t sell in the toy consignment sale will be given away, along with all the new toys.
“Our goal is that each family will go home with three or four gifts per child and put them under their tree. And we do some gift wrapping,” Pitt said.
Bibles also will be given away.
“Our No. 1 thing that we want, we want to give people Jesus. Some people already have Jesus, we just want to love them like Jesus would want us to love them, and that is what this is all about: Celebrating Him, celebrating the birth of our savior. So we give out Bibles at giveaway. We give out children’s Bibles, we give out adult Bibles, everything. So we do take donations of Bibles also,” Pitt said.