Meet Mr Carrot, Miss Strawberry and Dr Broccoli from IKEA!

Do you remember when I last posted about IKEA’s global annual Soft Toy campaign? Well, obviously someone did when she, from all the way in the UK, e-mailed me to let me know that she’d bank in some money to my account just to buy some of these toys for the kids in Malaysia, those who need love and happiness in their lives. Her exact words was “I would have done it here (in the UK) but I’d rather help out the poor kids in my country – that has more meaning to me”. Aliaa, you seriously ROCK!

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Through platforms like IKEA, countless of people could contribute back to the society all over the world, with just a small (but significant) initiative like this. Meet the few toys who have all met their new owners – Mr Carrot, Miss Strawberry and Dr Broccoli! I like the fact that they represent good vegetables that one should eat for a healthy diet. Well thought of, guys at IKEA!

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They are countless of other toys available too. While it may seem “useless”, I suspect that some of us may have taken for granted things that we’ve always had – try to remember if you’ve

ever played with some sort of toy. Chances are, you have. A lot of these kids in orphanages crave for love in this form, but never did get it.

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Of course some of the toys cost a little more, and are more beautiful then others – but to maximize what Aliaa donated, we preferred to select the vegetable toys that was just about RM25 ish – which means we could buy about 9 of them = 9 happy kids! (besides, getting them vegetable & fruit characters are just too cute, and has better intentions, kan?)

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So this is Mr Carrot! Say hi to Mr Carrot 🙂 One of the criteria that @Missy_a_n gave me was that she wanted a toy that wasn’t too small that they could swallow it, rather, a large one where they could hug it to sleep. When I saw Mr Carrot here, I melted. You’d feel the same, kan?

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And this is Miss Strawberry. How

can you not love her? The girl (or boy!) who ended up getting this will grow up rosy thanks to the sweet colour it has. I swear to you, the material is so soft and the touch is smooth to hold, so much so that I couldn’t resist hugging her myself!

Last but not least, Dr Broccoli. Don’t know why I gave him the title Dr, but he looks smart doesn’t he? Looks like the type of food that if you eat it, you will get smarter. I think it’s a great way to get these kids to eat veggies, though it does sound a little weird – to eat a replica of your toy! (Ps – I think he’s a Scottish, with that skirt he has on!)

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And so we (Melvin, my very good friend) went ahead and bought all 9 of them. We had so much fun taking it to the counter getting stares from everyone else haha. Two professional-looking guys, holding nothing but toys – TOO ADORABLE!

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However for some reason, this photo that we got a random friend I bumped into (I think she thinks I’ve turned cuckoo lol) looks a little sick… and I have absolutely no comments on this!

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Finally it came to the point where we had to part with our beloved Mr Carrot, Miss Strawberry and Dr Broccoli. Even Melvin here looks sad. Doesn’t he suit well carrying those toys? Sigh. But hey, at least it’ll make some nine, love-needed kids happy, no? It’s all good 🙂

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So here we are, this is the lady who will be sending the toy over to an orphanage – seeing as I was a little too busy running quite a number of things this year. Thank you so much for helping out Carmen, and I really hope the kids who receive this would have a big smile plastered all over their faces, if only for the short moment the toy lives with them. Every second counts, and every little thing makes a difference.

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Before I went back home, I enjoyed a piece of nasi lemak and asked myself, I must have made quite an effort going this far just to make 9 little kids happy, and the money that @missy_a_n gave us should have been part of her hard-earned money, so why bother doing something like this again? Within those moments, I then realized that it is because companies like IKEA has reminded us how efforts like this can be done so easily, thanks to the kind of resources they have, added with our little kindess, and with that we can impact the world globally, as this initiative runs throughout all their stores all around the world in God know how many countries.

Yes it is the same @missy_a_n who sponsored my heels at the Global Walk-A-Mile-In-Her-Shoes Day 🙂

So we were wrong to think that we’d be the only ones involved in this effort; there’s probably countless of people who participated in this initiative, which means that the impact is probably bigger than we realized – hence it really was worth every single second, and I really hope to participate in any sort of initiatives like this next time. If you do, too, follow IKEA Malaysia on Facebook, or myself on Twitter (@spinzer) and stay tuned to our updates till the next time this happens! Thanks for reading, and thanks, @missy_a_n, for this realization 🙂