@The NYC Toy fair 2008 I toured the Thames and Kosmos area, one of the best of the entire Toy Fair. Thames & Kosmos currently offers 55 science kits on: Energy, technology, electronics, chemistry, biology, physics, natural history, earth science and others. Pictured here, the Radio Ace DIY tube radio kit.
Computer Systems Engineering kit – Link.
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4 thoughts on “Thames and Kosmos – great science, bio, electronics and DIY kits”
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In the early days, I tried to use one of the 300-in-1 electronics kits from Radio Shack. I found it pretty dismal, with little flexibility and a manual that was basically “connect these wires…now, see, it blinks! cool!”
Somehow I located a mail order Kosmos electronics kit, with translated stickers over the German box art and a first-draft translated manual. The projects were great, tied together very well, offered good explanation of theory and suggested independent modification. Even translated, the manual was able to get across the concepts I wanted to understand. Based on that, I can definitely recommend the Kosmos kits if they haven’t changed their style over the years.
macegr, they have changed their style. They had to. You can’t educate the kids like it is still 1920 (when the first Kosmos radio kit was released), or like it is still 1980 or 1990.
They also removed a lot of the “dangerous” chemicals and experiments from chemistry and other sets.
Still, I consider them great.