@futurebird do you have thoughts you'd care to share about clones of the Radio Shack "N-in-1 Electronics Kit"? (They were basically a breadboard with components you connected by pinching wires into springs.) It looks like "snap circuits" are the thing to get now, but those seem less appealing.
I started looking around, and it looks like Elenco did at some point sell a 130-in-1 electronics kit (https://www.robotshop.com/products/130-in-1-electronics-playground?qd=ee8c0cc016950391e32ba9fde57f84ab). But surely there must be other kits like this.