Having done several undergrad chem classes, I'm impressed how much of the article was outright wrong on a chemistry basis, along with lots of the HN comments. Mostly names wrong, but some basic concepts were messed up like you don't make a fertilizer bomb out of potassium nitrate. Its like saying you could make a ipod out of a watch, because both use circuit boards and silicon based chips.

I'm almost 100% certain the article was not run past a chemist before publishing. Note that a chemistry teacher is an ed degree who was hired to teach, chemistry knowledge is a nice to have, but quite optional.

Also funny watching the article dance around the real reason, nobody on the planet works harder than teenagers trying to be cool, and its not cool to be smart, chem sets are for smart kids, therefore chem sets are not popular as a gift, compared, perhaps, to a football. They were never popular anyway, although they did "bubble" for a decade or so in the 50s. In a similar way I expect in 60 years we'll be treated to journalists writing "whatever happened to McMansions/SUVs" and they'll somehow get it entirely wrong.