Suboptimal Christmas: how to not get a Lectron electronic kit

In the 1970s I got to visit my grandparents every summer. They had a big house, and sometimes I liked to play in the large basement. My grandfather’s wood shop was down there, though I didn’t spend much time in it when he wasn’t there working on something. There was a lot of disused furniture, books, clothing, and all manner of other stuff.

One day I happened onto a box containing an electronic kit, with components packaged into plastic blocks with magnetic contacts. The blocks could be assembled onto a metal plate to form various interesting circuits, with many examples in the manual. I spent several hours playing with it, then my grandmother found me. She was upset because she had bought it to give me as a Christmas gift, and thought she had hidden it adequately. I didn’t get to play with it any more, and I didn’t receive it as a Christmas gift.

I didn’t remember the name of the kit, and I’d never seen one again until today, though I did get a Radio Shack 100-in-1 Electronic Project Kit a few years later.  A friend got one of the kits with plastic blocks with magnetic contacts recently, and it turns out that it is a Lectron kit.  They are still made and sold in Germany.The Lectron blocks look exactly like what I remember from the basement.    In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were imported and sold in the US by the Macalaster Scientific subsidiary of Raytheon. The Decode Systems web site has a review from the September 1967 issue of Electronics Illustrated.

There are some other similar products, such as the Elenco Snap Circuits (available from Radio Shack), and for digital logic, Logiblocs.  Bloc-Tronic was similar to Lectron, but was apparently not very commercially successful, as it is extremely rare.

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4 Responses to Suboptimal Christmas: how to not get a Lectron electronic kit

  1. Les Hildenbrandt says:

    The local kids science museum has an exhibit something like that. The magnetic blocks are lights, potentiometers, switches, resistors and diodes. There are also battery blocks, and the kids can attach the parts in whatever order. I was concerned about what would happen if the kids shorted out the battery, I worried that some wires might get red hot as the power source was D cells. I later discovered that the actual power source was a current limited supply under the table attached to the battery device.

  2. Ed says:

    I had one of those Lectron kits as a child (1970′s) and remember it fondly!
    I spent untold hours playing with the blocks and assembling them in the order depicted
    by the images in the accompanying book.
    My parents, throughout the years continued to purchase upgrade packs and pretty soon
    I was creating projects that were too small for that little metal plate. I learned
    to join two or more plates together using alligator clips.
    I even began to create some of my own circuits! I have one gripe though, in hindsite
    and that is that while the kit was fun and all, it did NOTHING on the theory of
    what I was assembling. Later on in life, I worked as an electronics assembler
    and again, I felt I was getting nothing on what it was I was assembling.
    I left that job and well, the reset is history…but I sure loved playing with
    those Lectron blocks!
    Ed
    web/gadget guru

  3. Brent says:

    Yes I also had a Lectron kit. It kindled a fire in me that lasted a lifetime. I am a retired boomed technician and this kit put me on my life path. I only wish I could find one for my grandson!

  4. mike wakefield says:

    Hi, I have a 1968 Lectron series 2 kit, in good condition, looks to have all the parts, book, and box. you can contact me if you would like to buy mikewakefield@hotmail.com thank you

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