Other creative toys/products that come to mind would be, say, Play-Doh as a sort of children’s intro to…Clay, I suppose? But in this vein without being exclusively directed towards children (albeit I imagine many may be).
Always enjoyed a creative kind of toy to mess around with.
I have had a few projects manufactured as well. But that was back when Eagle was the best option (Kicad wasnt as usable or stable back in 2008-9).
I’ve really enjoyed the Code simulators in Fritzing, Tinkercad (the electronics section) and there’s a Mac/iOS app called iCircuit that offers SPICE simulating with Arduino code too and makes schematic design pretty fun for beginners. Also it links to wikipedia and data sheets for all its components. The problem is it’s not extensible, so you only get what it has included.
Ah yeah I remember those days. The progress KiCAD has made is nothing short of amazing.
I used to like the code simulator in AVR Studio 4, but since acquisition by Microchip it’s borderline unusable and crashes constantly.
Haven’t heard of iCircuit! Maybe I’ll give it a try.