My dad got me one of these sometime in the second half of the 60's when I would've been what we now call 'pre-teen' - I still remember it fondly. He was a professional electronics engineer so there were hundreds of times as many components poking out of various boxes stacked around the house. I'm not sure now whether he bought the kit to get me over the early hurdles of soldering and circuit design (which it did) or whether he just hoped it would keep me away from his stuff (which it didn't
). I was bitten by the hobby through my teenage years but then there was a 20-30 year hiatus when I was distracted by girls, beer, university and work (which did involve a sort of extreme electronics). I'm back to it now though ...
Cheers,
GJ