A favorite of mine growing up. I loved trying to make water worthy boats. They were terrifying boats.
Been a while since I thought about this kit! I think my parents still had it for a number of years before I finally let it go. I too tried to make some very whacky and barely tub-worthy boats. I think I got a spider bot that would climb a string working and kept it in that configuration for a while too.
Did y’all have other science kit toys as a kid? Another favorite of mine was an electronics project kit where you wired together little springs (a very child friendly breadboard) to make various electronic gizmos. I think I was too young for that one but I wish I’d learned circuitry a little better from it.
I had the robot version of OP as a kid (I still have most, if not all of it in a closet). The one I really wanted though, was Rokenbok stuff. I loved seeing the displays in ZanyBrainy and Toys-r-Us (though I remember the Toys-R-Us displays were basic-bitch shit compared to ZanyBrainy, which tended to have all the kits put together into a single interactive display).
It looks like you can get Rokenbok pieces pretty cheaply now on eBay (though the RC vehicles are more expensive), so I might get some soon. I love factorio, and Rokenbok was a lot like IRL factorio. It was even compatible with Legos!
Yes! We had so many! We’d go to museums often, and we’d be allowed to get something from the shop, and museums have these kind of kits so often! I don’t remember any of those as well, it was lucky I got the name of this!
There were a lot of chemical ones, one we made cheese with, one with so so so many wires?
I liked the cheese one!
Wow, have not thought about this toy since I was a little kid in the mid 90s!! We made a boat out of it and attached a fishing line to catch a giant fish in the neighborhood pond…never cought the damn thing. Made all kinds of things!
Boats were the best! Loved those little floating things!
It took me ages to get the name of the toy! I started thinking of them, but everyone was saying tinker toys or knex and the like, until someone got my (very wrong) description of the floaties, and bam! It’s the toy in my head!
Fuuuu. Haven’t thought about these in decades. They were cool as shit though. You could make so many crazy things.
Unless I’m thinking of something else, I’m pretty sure I had a tank tread “robot” set with a module that you could program really commands into, and then have them execute them in series.
Go forward, turn right move backward twice, make a bunch of funny sounds and blink some lights, etc.
That set was cool as shit.
I gave my kid my big crate of capsela a few years ago. Aside from having to sand a few contacts it all worked great after 25 years of non-use and also led us into some cool 3d printing projects. I wish they made more toys like this today.
