I love science kits, I really do – I can’t help it.  It saddens me a little when the cog kits I get are in dayglo orange, however and emblazoned with assurances that it’s not suitable for under 6 months.  However, there seems to be a range of science kits in Japan that suit me right down to the ground – Gakken Adult Science Kits and magazine feature the above Edison style phonograph kit, a Stirling engine kit and a steam car kit.  All three I approve of highly in principle.  The phonograph uses cheap plastic cups as your recording cylinder, ready for playback with a little weight modification.  As you can imagine, I doubt that the sound will be up to Dolby 5.1, but I adore it for the Steampunk hands-on nature of it.  It seems you can buy these things in the US from Very Cool Things, but I’m unsure if other places do them cheaper (there was one ebay auction I saw, but I doubt it’ll last).

And lastly – it greatly appeals to me to be hosting a party, complete with cheap plastic cups, only to tell my guests later that their cups actually contain recorded messages!  Silly, I realise, but fun.  *chuckles*  Oh, if anyone can read Japanese, and finds out anything more about this item, then I’d love to know – it seems to be a film projector kit?