I had some of the Philips EE2000 stuff in Germany, and then the Radio Shack 130-in-1 after we moved to Canada. It was all great, however, the manuals for the Radio Shack kits aren't very good at actually teaching electronics. It was a revelation to find, many years later at a thrift store, an Elenco brand kit, same spring clip-through-cardboard technology, but with an absolutely fantastic manual that is a basic electronics education in fun form. That makes all the difference.
More recently, found a 160-ish-in-1 set, the kind with one quad NAND gate, one dual op amp. Challenged myself to do something really hard with it, namely, display incrementing digits on the 7-segment display as the potentiometer is turned. I got as far as 1-2-3-4. It may just barely be possible, maybe, to get to 1-2-3-4-5. I never tried that but I did manage a circuit that displays binary counts from 000 to 111, yes, 7 increments, using three of the LEDs in the 7-segment display. This was intended as a challenge for others, one a teenager, the other an adult, who had shown transient interest in learning electronics, but neither took up the challenge.
I do have a writeup for the 1-2-3-4 circuit if anyone wants it privately (m a r k u s @ w a n d e l . c a), and I think I did make a wiring list for the 000-111 circuit. Both the sets have gone of course, given to the intended challengees.
More recently, found a 160-ish-in-1 set, the kind with one quad NAND gate, one dual op amp. Challenged myself to do something really hard with it, namely, display incrementing digits on the 7-segment display as the potentiometer is turned. I got as far as 1-2-3-4. It may just barely be possible, maybe, to get to 1-2-3-4-5. I never tried that but I did manage a circuit that displays binary counts from 000 to 111, yes, 7 increments, using three of the LEDs in the 7-segment display. This was intended as a challenge for others, one a teenager, the other an adult, who had shown transient interest in learning electronics, but neither took up the challenge.
I do have a writeup for the 1-2-3-4 circuit if anyone wants it privately (m a r k u s @ w a n d e l . c a), and I think I did make a wiring list for the 000-111 circuit. Both the sets have gone of course, given to the intended challengees.