As for the why, you might need to read back to the beginning of this thread.... But most people posting in this thread see a need for something that is different from what is being offered for sale as a way of enabling youth participation.

I for one, as an American, have been looking for something like this for awhile in the interest of enabling youth participation. I believe the ability to home build it as very important because:

1) I think you can come up with a better boat for the purpose.
2) the creation of the boat between the parents/clubs and young sailors will help get them into it.
3) It does not have to economically viable for a company to produce it.

The last part is the important part - this means the design can live on, and people can have one or many in the future long after any company may have given up trying to make a profit and killed it. And, if there are only 10 boats in the world so what. Hopefully those 10 boats are being put to good use - maybe they exist only in one club, but then I'd say the mission is still accomplished. If at some point in the future another club builds 10 more, and then it takes off in a region, well, who knows. If it never becomes a racing class but a handful of families build them for their kids, mission is still accomplished.

Point is, I don't see that happening with any of the current boats available from a manufacturer, new or used, at least for the racing part. This has been an interesting exercise if for no other reason than some of us have been exposed to small buildable cat classes we didn't even know existed. If this fails, I've seen enough that I would try one of those designs for a youth program.

Agree on the need to keep it simple and reduce the exotic materials as much as possible. But, in some cases it might make things easier and cheaper, so the use/elimination should be considered wisely.

For the general thread:
On the needs to look like a toy thing - I think this goes both ways. You may want a toy look for the really young, but once other boats start to look "hot" the toy look will work against you. I agree with the idea that the paint job can suffice for the toy look for the young. Go for a platform that looks good as racey boat, not a toy. Apply paint schemes to make it enticing to the Spongebob set.

On sails - I believe something like this can be done such that a simpler smaller rig goes for the younger kids, and for the older kids a more powerful and interesting rig to keep them going. The same platform should suffice for both.

On the bows - the overriding factor here should be what is considered safer for the purpose of the boats - kids. If parents think that a potentially higher speed boat with a pointy end might endanger children who haven't learned the finer points of boat control, well, adoption of the boat may suffer. Those of us who have put kids into sailing programs can enlighten us as to what the prevailing mind sets are...

Just my thoughts...