About 1,500 Renton-area families will have bountiful Christmas mornings this year, thanks to a successful toy drive.

“If we didn’t do this then there would be 3,000 kids who would not have a wonderful Christmas morning,” said Salvation Army captain Terry Masango.

The Salvation Army collected about 9,500 toys this year with about 4,000 coming from Hasbro, parent company of Renton’s Wizards of the Coast.

Parents lined up outside with umbrellas, waiting for their turn to “shop” Dec. 22.

Stacks of colorful toys teetered on long table tops, as volunteers helped mothers and fathers find the perfect toy cars and stuffed bears.

For Masango the drive is about giving children a Christmas morning he never had as a child.

“When I was growing up in Africa, I pushed a brick in the sand like a bus, and I always wondered what it’d be like to have a tree and gifts under it,” Masango said.

For the second year the Salvation Army also gave gifts to seniors and their spouses.

“We know that a lot of seniors are lonely,” Masango said. “This would be a way of saying somebody cares.”

Families also received all the traditional ingredients for a Christmas dinner.

The project came together with the help of several groups within the community, Masango said.

LA Fitness donated their space near Fred Meyer for a month to host the distribution.

Over a hundred volunteers worked Christmas week to distribute the gifts, including about 35 from Wizards of the Coast.

About 90 families went through the line every 30 minutes, Masango said. “We couldn’t do it with just our staff.”

Youth from Renton, Lindbergh and Hazen high schools also volunteered.

Many of the gifts were collected through the Giving Tree and Toy-N-Joy drives, which were held throughout the area.

For about 40 years, First Savings Bank Northwest has covered a tree in warm winter clothing, which is also distributed at the event, Masango said.