NINTENDO Australia fears it could be swamped by requests for freebies after a cute story of goodwill went viral on the internet.

11-year-old Victorian schoolgirl Helen last month wrote to the company as part of her Year 6 class project.

"The reason I'm writting (sic) to your company is because at school we are learning how to write letters to companies," Helen wrote.

"We have 25 students in our class and we have 25 companies. I chose your company because I'm a big fan of yours."

In fact Helen was such a big fan of Nintendo she couldn't resist asking for a DS gaming console after her parents "refused" to buy her one.

"I also have a request to make. My request is quite big. I would like a DS please for those many reasons," Helen wrote.

Nintendo obliged and sent a new DS to Helen's school along with a letter of reply to the young girl.

"Thank you for your letter — we were very impressed. I really hope you and your classmates enjoy playing the DS," wrote a Nintendo staff member.

Now the exchange — including Helen's letter and Nintendo's reply — has gone viral on the internet.

Just two days after being posted online, the exchange has been viewed more than 330,000 times on image-sharing site imgur.

It has also attracted thousands of votes on link-sharing websites like Reddit and Digg.

But for every reader that responded with a "daaaaw", there's another who has joked about trying it out for themselves.

"So I can just send any company a letter and they will give me a product?" asked one reader on Digg.

"I'm going to send a letter to Steve for a certain pad," said another.

However if you're thinking about writing to Nintendo under the pretence of a school project, be warned — they verify all requests.

"Nintendo always calls the school, hospital, retirement home, or whatever it may be to ensure the letter is legitimate," said Nintendo Australia's Heather Murphy.

"In this particular case, Nintendo called the school and spoke to the school principal."

After talking to the principal to make sure the gaming console would be well used, Nintendo sent a DS and a "game suitable for children to play" to the school.

Ms Murphy said it wasn't common practice to give away free consoles — or even reply — to everyone who wrote to the company. She said it received "hundreds" of letters per day.

"Nintendo does not routinely give away products in response to letters. From time to time, we may donate product to schools, hospitals or retirement villages," she said.

"We receive a high number of letters on a daily basis, and unfortunately we are not able to respond to every one.

"So therefore we hope we do not receive an influx as we simply would not be able to respond."

However Ms Murphy said Nintendo would like to thank everyone who had written to the company already.

"Especially those letters that tell Nintendo about their experiences with our products and how and why they enjoy them so much," she said.