Among other product designers who have been adding a modern twist to classic toy designs, Detroit, Michigan-based Matthew Tait of TAIT Design Co. has done an exceptional job of combining DIY interactivity to otherwise perfect wooden toy designs.
The designer, who started TAIT Design Co. in 2013, went to school to become a graphic designer but found a love for industrial design and engineering during the process. Due to his wide-ranging interests in design, he founded Tait Design Co. with the goal of accommodating anything that he would come up with…regardless of the end product. For his first physical product, Tait chose to tackle one of the most iconic wooden toys of all-time: the balsa wood airplane.
“For my first product, I decided to tackle an iconic piece of Americana – the balsa model airplane,” he says. “I had these when I was younger as did just about anyone one you ask. A bright smile often washes over an old grin, “I used to have those as a kid”. Immediately what follows is generally a laugh about how quickly they broke and somehow vaporized into thin air. I wanted to make a better one, so I started to develop the Turbo Flyer concept. What I ended up creating was a handmade, screen-printed, solid body aircraft with thicker wood and better aerodynamics. The packaging design was a unique, eco-friendly, cardboard velcro-lock case.”
After countless nights of iterating on the design, cutting parts out and hand-assembling each kit one-by-one, Tait launched a website in an effort to sell a few in order to help fund a Makerspace membership. The rest, as they say, is history.
“I launched my website, and it ended up being a success. I ran out of Turbo Flyers and immediately started making more. They were featured in several design blogs, magazines, and included as one of 2013’s best designed products at the AIGA national gallery in New York.”
With the success of the Turbo Flyer, Tait then turned his attention to another classic wood toy: the Yo-Yo. While many Yo-Yo designs that have been developed in the last few decades have been made from plastic, the original Yo-Yos were in fact made from wood. While building a wooden Yo-Yo may not be the most challenging of wood projects, Tait’s well-considered design, packaging and DIY approach makes an otherwise ho-hum product feel exciting.
The hand-turned hard maple body features a removable grooved steel axle that, according to Tait, “makes string tricks easier and knot removal a thing of the past”. Additionally, Tait recently uploaded a video that features a brief glimpse of his manufacturing process from raw material to the user experience for the Sling-Slang:

“I’ve been passionate about building things for as long as I can remember,” adds Tait. “My favorite thing when I was younger was when something broke in the house and my parents would give it to me to take apart. I like to dissect the inner workings of the objects around us, find out how they were made, where the source materials came from, and how the end user interacts with them.”
Both the Turbo Flyer ($18.00) and the Sling-Slang ($30.00) are available at TAIT Design Co.