You know I (like many others) also started out on those little lab kits, with the springs... And like you I learned nearly nothing except that one mistake can cause a huge frustration and disappointment... It was a fun toy and as an adult I might actually have learned something but as a child it was simply beyond me... Now with the internet at your fingertips, simulators and access to a plethora of info and cheap components you can do so much more and learn so much faster if you simply spend the time tinkering and reading online...
That is worth quoting in it's entirety.
I too started with the same thing. I too learned far less than I could have. However, in retrospect, you could learn a lot with these (and yes, even (maybe especially) as an adult).
What you need is support from someone who is willing to explain how the circuits work and you need the discipline to keep focussed on one circuit until you understand it.
These things are very much like a circuit simulator, except with real components.
I'm not sure that it's that much different from using a solderless breadboard, other than it allows construction without the need to read schematics.
OH, that was one think I learned from these things -- how to read schematics. Once you got proficient at using them, you could construct the circuit just from looking at the schematic, and not needing to worry about the wiring instructions (which you could fall back to if you needed to).
The circuit descriptions for many of the circuits I built were too complex (perhaps paradoxically because they were so short) for me to understand the more complex ones.
These days I look back and wish I had a forum like this to help me understand them. I can't imagine how much further forward I'd be in my understanding.