Favorite affordable (<$200) beginner robotics kits?

Played around with Arduino a bit in the past, and Mindstorm, and a little vex.

Do you guys think I should go for a Lego Mindstorms set as a way to start getting into robotics?

I know of a lot of people that recommend going through arduino and buying a bunch of shit and throwing it together etc. But the thing that makes me interested in Mindstorms is how everything seems to be in one place. A smart brick programmable through multiple different programming languages(for example Python, java, C) a good kit that can be really modular and built into different components, all sorts of sensors.

I just think its a good option, but if someone were to recommend a particular book or resource for Arduino or some other stuff I would definitely consider it.

So, what do you lads think?

* Automated Technical and Fundamental Expert Advisor trading in MT4 with Python dealing with RSS News Feed on the Financial Calendar
* Food decision/recommender/randomizer app
* Food decision/recommender/randomizer bot
* Personal Companion set up on Raspberry Pi with Jasper AI, buy BrickPi and Lego Mindstorm to make it a friendly moving robot
* Cardboard fort for my kid
* A 3D game that involves hacking with drama storyline (inspired from Mr. Robot) and publish it on Steam
* A SaaS app like Tinder that matches would-be Project Managers with Devs to push Devs to finish side projects that we have and push Project Managers to use whatever PM techniques and methodology (Six Sigma perhaps)

And so much more... Ughh.