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This one?

hate replying to myself; finally found it. The name is actually "bloc-tronic". Google returns several hits, such as:
http://images.lifeaftercoffee.com/v/bloc-tronic/

Which has excellent images of the individual blocks, the manual (with a robot-shaped design) on the front, etc.

Maybe there's patents in the way - or they're still being made - or they're too expensive to make - but the Denshi Block people could pick up a thing or two from them.

Do you, by change, mean Bloc Tronic?
Unfortunately, not many people remember it

God, I feel old, now...

This is a switch (about halfway down the page)!

For me, understanding what the different components did wasn't the hard part (an op-amp was simply a varying resistance resistor controlled by another current). The hard part was getting all the different wires to stay in the springs as the circuit was assembled. You would have short red wires, medium length green wires, and long yellow wires. Putting together a circuit would involve making around 20+ connections for a simple circuit, and 100+ connections for a complex circuit. Some circuits would require 5+ wires to be placed together.

The Bloc-Tronic kit seemed to solve this problem by having each component sealed in a little plastic cube. Each cube has a number and the electronics symbol. Putting together a circuit simply involved placing the cubes together in the right order. Notches/bumps made sure you could only put safe combinations of cubes together. There's a gallery of what a kit looked like

As the author of this website speculates, you could only imagine what a similar kit could do with todays components (LED displays, A/D convertors, light/temperature/pressure/humidity sensors).

Our hardware engineering course did something similar with logic gates - a number of basic circuits - flip-flop gate, and, or not, nand and LED's were combined on a single circuit board. The chips could be wired together to form circuits, and the results noted down.

For me, understanding what the different components did wasn't the hard part (an op-amp was simply a varying resistance resistor controlled by another current). The hard part was getting all the different wires to stay in the springs as the circuit was assembled. You would have short red wires, medium length green wires, and long yellow wires. Putting together a circuit would involve making around 20+ connections for a simple circuit, and 100+ connections for a complex circuit. Some circuits would require 5+ wires to be placed together.

The Bloc-Tronic kit seemed to solve this problem by having each component sealed in a little plastic cube. Each cube has a number and the electronics symbol. Putting together a circuit simply involved placing the cubes together in the right order. Notches/bumps made sure you could only put safe combinations of cubes together. There's a gallery of what a kit looked like

As the author of this website speculates, you could only imagine what a similar kit could do with todays components (LED displays, A/D convertors, light/temperature/pressure/humidity sensors).

Our hardware engineering course did something similar with logic gates - a number of basic circuits - flip-flop gate, and, or not, nand and LED's were combined on a single circuit board. The chips could be wired together to form circuits, and the results noted down.

I read about an interesting combination with this idea similar to this recently:
http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/2005/10/05/buy-your -way-through-scool-with-distance-education/

Basically, combine what's written above with distance or online education and suddenly outsourcing your whole degree becomes simple.