Families receive free tacos while browsing toys on Christmas Eve at an inaugural Free Toy Giveaway event put on by Troup businesses Berny’s Tacos and Hometown Development.

TROUP — On Christmas Eve, Daniel Flores and JK Hamilton parked a trailer carrying more than 500 toys at the four-way stop at Duval in downtown Troup to hand out Christmas presents to Troup families.

A 16-foot trailer was loaded with everything from characters from “Toy Story,” disc launchers, Nerf guns, bracelet making kits, baby dolls, craft sets and more.

Flores, who owns Berny’s Tacos, and Hamilton, who owns Hometown Development, handed out free tacos to families while children browsed the large toy selection and chose one as a Christmas present.

Flores said the event was so well received, they plan on making it an annual event.

“We feel the event went very well, we gave away over 500 toys to the children and did not have a single toy left at the end of the day,” said Flores. “We plan on doing a free toy giveaway every year from here on out and hopefully each event will get bigger as time goes on.”

Flores said it felt good to help others, especially at this time of year.

“We just wanted to spread a little love and Christmas cheer to the families of Troup, Texas,” he said. “Christmas is a time of love, sharing, giving and compassion and we just wanted to spread as much as we could to the people in our community.”

Flores said he wasn’t exactly sure how many attended but felt it was in the hundreds.

“I’m not sure on exact numbers but we probably had close to 300 people attend the event throughout the day,” Flores said. “We had gifts stored in the taco shop behind where we were parked and would restock the trainer periodically until all the gifts were gone.”

Flores said the community deserved some special attention.

“Troup has an amazing community, it felt really good to do this,” Flores said.