My kiddo has a couple of those, and I'm still in two minds about some of the choices that they provide in those kits.

It feels a little like "Follow these instructions exactly" without requiring understanding in a lot of cases. For example, the music IC doesn't have any of it's terminals labelled.

The same with the transistor; it doesn't seem to explain exactly why you'd need to use it, why you'd need a resistor on the base, etc. On that note, It's also possible to potentially damage stuff if you just try to experiment without understanding.

I feel like they could have made some of the parts a bit more flexible -- have current limiting resistors built into the LED & transistor units for example, provide point-to-point wires rather than rigid 1/2/3 unit connectors, etc etc.

I had one of those when I was maybe 8. Got some enjoyment out of it, and then a couple years later I got RadioShack's Electronic Learning Lab, which was much more advanced. After receiving and opening it, I was actually in tears (IIRC) because it looked so complicated and I didn't even know how to get a wire into the breadboard.

That ELL gave me probably 100s of hours of fun and learning over the next 5 years.

Had these for my kids. It is confidence-building either way. And it is likely to spark a lot of questions like "What is a transistor anyway?"

I certainly would not WITHHOLD Snap Circuits from a kid because they might not know what's inside the IC.