I had the 150-in-1 kit and just had to poke around eBay looking at the pictures to see how well I remembered it. There’s nothing on the board that isn’t easily obtainable on Amazon for cheap. Or from Aliexpress for even cheaper.
I’ve recently picked up a bunch of Arduinos with the hope that I’d (re)learn all the lessons I supposedly worked through back in the day. Most of those components are pennies or less. The most expensive item I think I have picked up was a five meter long reel of addressable RGB LEDs and that was maybe 20 bucks.
There’s a good old fashioned electronics store in St. Louis that specializes in connectors, capacitors, vacuum tubes and all that classic stuff. It’s a great favorite among ham radio operators and hi-fi enthusiasts. They still have a few of those kits for sale.
I had one in my youth that was a collection of computer circuitry, at a very basic level. It had a clock that cycled about 1 Hz, some lights, and a handful of gates – AND, OR, NOT, and the like. You could couple two NANDs back to back to make a flip-flop. That was just about the limit of its capacity, but it was a really spiffing logic instruction toy.
(Heh. I still have it. I wonder if it would still work?)
And my 200-in-one is still at Mom’s house. If I knew any kid who’d actually appreciate it, I’d give it away in a heartbeat, but I can’t bear the thought of giving it to someone who wouldn’t appreciate it, or of just throwing it out.
I had one of those Radio Shack kits—I think it was the 100-in-1 model.
However, I also had a Lectron set, which was also very cool; instead of wires, you’d create circuits by lining up blocks like dominoes. Anybody else remember those?
Now that I think about it, this thread really isn’t about any art form. And it’s not a game, either-- We don’t have a specific forum for toys. There was a General Question (what was this thing called), but it was answered quickly, and most of the thread is general reminiscing. I guess that makes IMHO the best fit.
The current equivalent of those “learning” kits are the arduinos - little $3 computers which can be combined with various other mostly inexpensive items (anywhere from simple switches and thermometers up to motors, GPS sensors and inertial navigation stuff) and then programmed using a regular computer, laptop, or tablet.
Unlike the kits from our childhood, these really are for kids 8 and UP - with no limit on the upper age.
They are surprisingly fun to play with even for old guys like me who’ve been involved in electronics all their lives.
While it’s true that Arduinos are awesome fun for all ages and appropriate mindset, there are still true “kids electronic experimentation” kits. My 11-year-old has had Snap Circuits kits since he was 9.
They’re marketed for “8 and up.” And they are very kid- and experimentation-friendly. For instance, battery packs appear to have inbuilt current limiters; my son didn’t even notice a dead short he had in one of his made-up circuits until I pointed it out. Do that with the old Tandy 150-in-One kits and you’d have sparks (and maybe melted wires).
I had one of the Radio Shack kits in the late 80’s, too. What I remember most about it was my frustration with the fact that one of the projects was supposed to be a radio (whether FM or AM, I can’t remember) but it would never work for me. I followed the instructions to the letter, and it just didn’t pick up a signal.
Always wanted one of those. A neat vintage item I did have (though I didn’t much know what I was doing with it) was this kit with modular tubes (like clear pvc pipes) and you could make a vacuum or a race car or a crappy robot with. I wish I knew what those were called.
The projects had names. My favorite was the one called “The Big Ear”: a basic amplifier in which the input signal actually came from the speaker, serving as a microphone, and you hooked up a mono earphone to listen. I actually used that particular project to bug the bedroom of my three sisters. I got a separate little speaker, and about 100 feet of wire, which I doubled up to run outside and into their window. I planted the speaker in the curtains. Using the 100-in-one electronics project (“The Big Ear”) I could hear everything they said.
But there was another project which essentially just reversed the signal, so I also could use the little speaker I’d planted in their curtain to make weird little noises in the middle of the night, which freaked them out tremendously.
I later used the “Big Ear” to tap into the household telephone, but moved on from that to using a walkie-talkie that was patched into the phone lines directly and just transmitted the signal to my receiver.
Thank you, Radio Shack. I learned a lot from that kit.
Yes. I had one of those when I was about 12. I built an AM radio with a speaker. The antenna was a ground wire that I attached to the metal stop on the dial of a rotary phone. It worked perfectly.
I remember something where you got these small cylindrical components with various patterns of colorful stripes on them, and a wires coming out of each end. You’d bend those and instert them in holes as instructed and a light would come on, etc. But I don’t remember a big board, just smaller set-ups. Maybe they were sold as separate experiments. This would have been mid/late-70s.
When I was ten to about thirteen, my parents had a subscription for Things of Science for me. I got the 60s blue boxes, like this guy reminisces about. I think they helped spark a life-long curiosity in me especially things STEM* but also softer subjects like history and biographies.
*Well, math not so much. I ran aground with trig and never studied calculus.
