Balsa wood airplanes have taken flight — and delivered joy — from Wakefield for 100 years

For a century now, a childhood favorite has been quietly taking flight from Wakefield.

Guillow's delivers aviation joy via balsa wood airplanes — those featherweight gliders that people have been tossing through the air and trying to untangle from tree branches since, basically, forever.

Across the U.S., the company is the only major player in the design and manufacture of these toys. Or, in the words of Guillow’s CEO and treasurer Tom Barker: “As far as balsa wood airplanes, we’re the guys.”

World War I Navy aviator Paul K. Guillow started the business in 1926 in his hometown of Wakefield. When Guillow's was established, actual airplanes with civilians on board were a novelty. How novel? Consider that Paul K. Guillow kept up a correspondence with none other than Orville Wright, of Wright Brothers "first in flight" fame.

One of the company's early products seemed to nod to the skepticism about newfangled flying machines. In 1928, the company introduced a board game cheerfully named “Crash: The New Airplane Game.”

Growing up in Wakefield, CEO Tom Barker's destiny seemed shaped by the local connection.

“When I was six or seven years old,” Barker said, “I went over to the drug store and I picked up one of the gliders for 10 or 25 cents, and I was reading the back of the package and it said, 'Manufactured in Wakefield, Mass.’ I said, ‘Holy cow! That's where I live!’ ”

He began working at the company 51 years ago, when he was still in high school.

“During the winter months,” Barker remembered, “I worked in the drafting room. During the summer months, I was put out in the factory and I ran every single machine out there ... I packed gliders and I cut wood and I went to the pig farms to drop off the sawdust.”

Eventually, he took charge. Barker said not a lot has changed with the passage of time.

“We're really very old school here," he said.

No need to tinker much with a good thing. Guillow's also makes balsa wood model airplane kits. But the humble glider is a long-time favorite.

“We have a product that is universally loved,” said Barker. “ It's just the imagination. A 9-year-old kid's going to be thinking that he's the best thing in the world. Maybe he's the astronaut, and ‘I'm gonna throw this thing way up in the sky!’ He can be anything he wants.”

Guillow's designer, Mark Tennant, who joined the company in 1990, said the gliders' appeal has been constant for decades.

“It put smiles on the faces of people back then,” Tennant said. “And it still puts smiles on faces."

Tennant said the pure elegance of the glider is a big part of its success. It’s a simple structure that offers layers of possibilities. The user decides how the plane flies.

“ The wing slot in the fuselage is longer than the wing, so you can slide that wing forward and backwards in the plane," Tennant explained. “And where that wing is in the little toy plane is the secret to get it to either fly straight and far or do stunts and loops."

People like to improvise when they fly these planes, because that’s a big part of the balsa wood glider experience. And the factory itself is a testament to improvisation. It dates back almost as far as the company itself. With its array of old metal contraptions it exudes a steampunk-like flair.

Keith Ballou, a machinist who started working at Guillow's in the 1970s, said he has designed, built, and improved machines and repurposed machines from other industries — all to serve the factory's unique product.

On the factory floor, he pointed to one of his creations: a "flow wrapper" originally found at the Swiss Premium Sausage company.

“I've changed a lot of things on that. And this is all built in-house," he said. "The feed system's one of a kind, because our product's one of a kind.”

Ballou said he’s glad he stayed at Guillow’s over the years even when other opportunities knocked.

"I had a chance to go work for a missile company up in Wilmington," he said. "But I didn't want to make bombs. I'd rather make toys."

CEO Barker acknowledged that not every single customer has been completely satisfied. In the lobby of the building, he pointed out a framed handwritten note sent to founder Paul Guillow decades ago.

“A kid wrote in who obviously broke his airplane," Barker said. "And he told Paul [that] ‘You make the lousiest airplanes in the world.’ "

For good measure the boy added: "PS Drop Dead."

That is not, however, a typical reaction. (Another child's letter in the lobby proclaims, "I just love your planes.")

“Flight just fascinates people,"  Barker said, “And you're learning while you're doing this, which is a wonderful thing.”

These balsa wood toys unlock something in pilots of all ages. They can make kids dream of the future and older folks relive their youth.

"To be able to buy a little toy airplane for three or four dollars ... and you’re able to throw it around the backyard," Tennant said. "It makes me feel like I'm 12 again."

Barker agrees.  "Every grownup's a kid at heart. That's really what it is."

A sticker printed to promote the 100th birthday sums up the spirit of Guillow's: "Fly an airplane — It's fun!"

To mark a century of service, Guillow's is co-sponsoring the Annual Stealth Squadron Model Airplane Club Fun Fly in Newbury on June 20, 2026.