The Bikes for Tykes assembly line officially got under way at 8:30 a.m. yesterday in a sixth-floor conference room at the First Hawaiian Bank building in Downtown Honolulu.

There, 65 moms, dads and kids — along with a group of Marines — latched, attached, snapped and fastened more than 100 Huffy bicycles together in barely more than two hours.

Officially, the event marked the kickoff of the Toys for Tots season in Honolulu, said Chuck Little, a Marine Forces Pacific spokesman.

The volunteers were employees and family members of BAE Systems, a defense contractor with some 900 employees on O'ahu.

"The BAE employees donate the money to purchase the bikes," said Little. "And because they buy them unassembled, they can get them at a better price. Then they come in with their families on their own time on a Saturday to assemble these bicycles, with an assist from the Marines."

Marines from the Kane'ohe Marine Reserve unit and active- duty Marines from Camp Smith supplied the muscle power to transport the finished product to a Honolulu warehouse to be delivered later to the Salvation Army, which distributes the toys for the Marines. Toys for Tots has been operated by the Marines since 1947.

The Salvation Army will give the bikes to selected disadvantaged children for the holidays.

"We have a total of 104 bikes," said Ken Kienle, the BAE operations director in Honolulu and the company's coordinator of Bikes for Tykes. "We've got a whole bunch of different shapes and sizes, girls and boys bikes, all colors."

There were 16-inch to 26-inch bikes, one-speed to 10-speed bikes, bikes for teenagers and bikes with training wheels for toddlers.

Charlie Drake's job at the last stop in the bicycle assembly line was to pump exactly 30 pounds of air into every tire with an electric air compressor.

"I donated two bikes myself," said Drake, who, as the company procurement manager, put in the purchase order to Huffy. He said he wasn't assigned the air pressure task. But he had a knack for it. It's all in the wrist, he said.

"I just picked up the hose and stared filling. The trick to putting air in the tire is to wiggle it a little before you push on the nozzle."

Drake's assistant, Raquel Takayama, 7, supervised the handling of the all-important pink tire pressure gauge. According to Raquel's mother, Doni Takayama, her daughter qualified as an "all-purpose volunteer," having donated her time to the Bikes for Tykes cause two years running.

That would make Mom herself, an administrative assistant in BAE's Spectral Solutions Division, a "senior veteran volunteer." She's worked the assembly line since the event's inception three years ago.

"The first year we had about 60 bicycles," she said. "And last year we donated about 70. This year we reached our goal of 100, and surpassed it by four. So we're pretty excited."

Gunnery Sgt. Chris Whitely, the Toys for Tots coordinator for the Kane'ohe Marine Reserve, said the bicycles would be a helpful addition to this year's goal of collecting 40,000 toys.

"Toys for Tots around the country are facilitated by the United States Marines," said Whitely. "Bikes for Tykes is one event among many that will take place between now and Dec. 25. Last year we collected above 30,000 toys on O'ahu. And we're expecting even more this time."