Time was when a pharmacy could be counted on to have a reasonable variety of basic chemicals on hand, and a book of, eg, “chemical magic” could be published with some confidence that the kids would be able to get the needed supplies locally and without much fuss. These days nobody’s willing to trust that the kids won’t mix something inappropriate and hurt themselves; the kit has to be sanity-checked for every possible combination.
Time was when a radio parts place could be found without too much trouble, and books of circuits to experiment with could be published with some confidence that the kids would be able to get the needed supplies locally and without much fuss. These days, even with leadless solder (which is harder to work with), people are paranoid about giving the kid access to a soldering iron.
There’s certainly lots of opportunity for creativity in things like model rocketry. But again, that requires that parents either be willing/able to supervise or to trust.
There’s also the basic problem these days that computers are a lot easier to fiddle with than hardware or materials, and it’s hard to hurt yourself… Though actually, that might be a way to revive some of these; offer computer-based tools for modelling/evaluating experiments…?
