I think something like this would be better than a Pi to get people into electronics, as theres no OS to concern yourself with.

If you want to make a small electronic gadget, something like a microcontroller makes more sense, as it'd be _much_ lower power than a Pi.

And additionally you could generate more accurate timing signals for things like VGA etc, than with a Pi.

These seem a lot simpler than the RasPi. I don't think they'll be running Linux. Looks more like a simple Arduino. Closest thing seems to be the LilyPad.

Much cheaper / simpler, also it's USB so should be able to use the Pi as a host