When I was a kid, I had something similar to this, but I got it at a garage sale. Since it was secondhand, it was missing parts. I remember flipping through the instruction manual hoping to build stuff and seeing the previous owners’ notes in the margins, but being unable to complete the projects myself because, while they remembered to include the manual, they forgot to include all sorts of circuits. Grumble.
Anyway, I stumbled across this product at OhGizmo! as a link to SpeedyDog. The SC-500 model is available via Speedydog for about $80. After a bit of search, however, I located the manufacturer page where you can find a lot of other Snap Circuits for a bit cheaper. If you’ve got a kid, I encourage you to get it one of these things. I remember having a lot of fun with my similar device even though it was totally ghetto.
Plus you might be able to turn your kid into a genius so he or she can grow up and make gobs of money and buy you an island fortress where he or she can create a device to control the weather and then you can operate the device and threaten countries with it and extort lots of money and then build a rocket and fly to Mars and terraform the planet and then start the Martian real estate boom. Yea.
Snap-Circuits.com
Snap Circuits – Easy To Build Electronics [OhGizmo!]