After seeing @lookmumnocomputer 's latest video I felt compelled to share the electronics kits of my childhood.
Whilst I don’t have either of them any more, I’ve been tempted several times to buy the same ones. Funnily enough it looks like you can still buy them brand new!
What were yours? Did you have any exposure to electronics as a kid?
I had an electronics kit like that. I am pretty sure it was from Dick Smith but I havent been able to find any pictures of it.
This is what I had when I was young
Plus there are some more here:
Ohhh yeah I had all of those as well. I also have a lot of Electronics Australia mags and CB Action, Amateur Radio Australia.
I had a Philips EE2003
I grew up in an IBM household, so no hardware, only software… but does anybody remember this?
Changing the source code so my bananas did more damage than my enemies…
No kits, just Everyday Electronics magazine, the local library and a shop in Edinburgh called Browns. The regular gag was to take in your components list and Mr Brown would cast an eye and say…“ah! You’re building an FM transmitter”
Not once did he get it wrong.
Sold every era from new fangled dip chips to 2 foot long brass and wood knife switches.
If I close my eyes I can smell the Bakelite.
Made from compressed dinosaur poo. True fact.
[not true at all]
Cheeky bu66er! I’m not that old!
It would be awesome if Sam made a Look Mum No Compter kit in that style for the Museum of Evrything Else giftshop.
Think I had the same one as Caustic…but I know I had 2 or 3 from Radio shack over the years before I advanced to a breadboard and random components.
I dont know about anyone else, but these kits made less sense to me than breadboarding. It could just be kid brain, but the abstraction lead me to not understand how things were connected which led to random experimentation.
I have the same problem with the “snap circuits” my daughter was given for Christmas a few years ago. They just don’t seem good for experimenting. It’s fun to build the circuits as described in the manuals…but actually trying to figure something out on your own…not so much.
Though - the frustration of trying that was what led me to a breadboard. I remember trying various ways to hook my own components (often scavenged from trashed electronics) into the spring setup without a soldering iron and that playing a roll in my dad getting me an actual breadboard to start experimenting with.
I was also lucky that my dad encouraged me and had an electronics background himself. Not professionally…but he’d had a ham license since high school back when you had to really learn some electronics to do so.
I really miss the old heathkit kits. I learned so much building those with my dad when I was a kid. I’ve yet to see any modern kits that do as well towards actually teaching the underlaying concepts of how the kit was designed and works. I still have the memory keyer we built together when I was in 3rd grade…and the manual to go with it which explains in detail what each part of the circuit does as you build it up.
This right here was really instrumental in getting me hooked on electronics.
I still remember the smell of the solder and looking forward to heating up the iron each night when my dad came home from work so we could build. And then being disappointed when we’d have to stop because dinner was ready and we had to clear our project off so there was room to eat 
I gave my daughter her first taste of molten solder 3 years ago when she was 7:
She was scared to hold the iron…but enjoyed adding the solder to the joints. We built a little radio shack memory game kit I got for almost nothing when they liquidated our local store. Kit taught nothing about how the circuit works…(not that there was much of a circuit…just a uC and a few buttons/LED’s) but she was super proud of what she helped build. She memorized all of the patterns in a day or two and it was no longer a challenge to her to play…but she took it to school for show and tell she was so proud of it. Unfortunately it came home inoperable and as far as I can tell non-repairable since it seems the uC got damaged somehow 
She’s helped me a few other times with small projects, and loves her snap circuits. But she doesn’t seem to want to learn the theory behind any of it which bums me out a bit…but I hold out hope that could change.
I had the 200-in-1 badged Radioshack i belive.
useful as an entry point and to spark ideas.
They are good for structured study. “Here’s a schematic for an AM receiver with a class A amplifier. Here are the parts. This is what each bit does. Look, you can join them up like this and confirm that it works. Read the complimentary book on basic electronics to learn more.”
To get more I think you need a suitable environment. A guy I worked with at Sunderland Poly was a former infant prodigy whose parents let him perform ridiculously dangerous experiments with 240VAC electricity and water. He was brilliant and fearless, the kind of physical experimenter I admire and envy.
My first breadboard was just that, a breadboard.
I had a grid of pencil lines with brass screws and cup washers at each intersection.
I made my dad a crystal radio on it for his birthday and then realized I’d just given away my only breadboard!
