Still crazy about electronics after all these years

When I was 13 or so my parents gave me a science-kit-of-the-month subscription and for a year I waited expectantly for the box to arrive each month. In it, I would find the components to explore some realm of science and technology–I especially recall constructing a spectrometer and viewing the spectra of various minerals held within a flame.

I would appreciate some help. Do you know of any educational engineering toys suitable for middle-school children? Perhaps most people can point to an event in their lives where the course of their careers became clearly defined. I can peg my own fascination with technology to dad's science gift to me–sort of a passing of the flame. With this in mind, I attended a premier show introducing the toys of the new millennium to see if the children of today's engineers had educational toys that could pique their interests in the sciences of their fathers. Frankly, I was disappointed. (I was more than disappointed when I found a board game whose premise was being the best at outwitting the police.) I am in no way saying that the toy industry is not technologically inclined. Between interactive board games and Sony's mechanical dog, there is a continuous spectrum of toys using technology to enhance the play behavior of our young. My interest, however, was in the ultimate up-to-your-elbows down-and-dirty total-immersion type of interactive experience. Nothing beats the satisfaction of putting bits of metal and plastic and glass together into a coherent bit of functional machinery. I've done some research on the Internet looking for educational toys with a do-it-yourself theme and found slim pickin's. True, today's glamour field is computers and the market is flooded with educational applications, but I was particularly interested in the hands on, engineering side of things. I found kits in basic electricity, electronics, and robotics, but no demanding projects like build your own short-wave radio. I'm hopeful that my limited research on the subject has overlooked a wealth of such engineering-based educational resources and that kids are still being charged up with the idea of creating the technological infrastructure of tomorrow. Gary Evan Jensen, Associate Editor