Rubiks Cube

Rubiks Cube came out of nowhere. One day, you’d never seen such a thing and the next day, everybody had one. Year after year, new variations came out – a little Rubik’s Cube you could put on your key chain, a big one for extra puzzling, and a whole rainbow of colors and hues to choose from.

We Loved Rubiks Cube

The Rubiks Cube is a mechanical puzzle – a cube that you twist and turn. Each of the six sides of a Rubiks Cube are colored with nine little stickers. Traditionally, these were red, blue, white, yellow, green, and orange, but eventually there were variations on the colors. Spin the cube to mix up the colors, and then try to align them all again.

It’s harder than it looks, people.

The toy was named after its inventor, Erno Rubik, who was a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture. He licensed his puzzle to Ideal Toys in 1980 and Rubiks Cube quickly became one of the biggest and longest lasting 80s fads. The Rubiks Cube was even the subject of a patent lawsuit in the early 80s, and cheap knockoffs of the Rubiks Cube have been showing up on sales racks for almost three decades.

Long Live 80s Toys

To date, over 350 million of these 80s toys have been sold, and that makes Rubiks Cube the number one selling puzzle of all time. Some say it’s not only the biggest selling puzzle, but the bestselling toy as well.

Rubiks Cube hails as the king of 80s toys and the mother of 80s fads.

Even today, almost 30 years after Rubiks Cube first hit the market, speedcubers still compete in championships to see who can solve the puzzle fastest. Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to solve it.

The standard Rubiks Cube is a 3x3x3 cube. However, variations go up to a 7x7x7 (for cubemasters) and down to a 2×2 (for the little ones). The beloved cube has inspired tons of similar puzzles (often called twisty puzzles), with all different sizes and shapes and even a few that actually change shape (like Rubiks Snake
). Word even has it that Mr. Rubik is releasing a brand new puzzle in the summer of 2009, and Rubiks Cube fans await with great anticipation.

Long Live 80s Fads

Today there are tons of variations on the Rubiks Cube, which means that 80s fads live on. You can get cubes with your favorite sports teams, globe-shaped cubes, and even cubes with your own personal photos instead of the colored stickers.

Like all 80s fads, Rubiks Cube inspired books, t-shirts, and a host of other items. Can’t solve your Rubiks Cube? Get The Simple Solution to Rubik’s Cube and you’ll be twisting your cube to solution in no time.

Rubiks Cube is probably the best of all the 80s fads and it’s definitely the number one among 80s toys. It’s outlasted many other fads and toys (go on, try to buy a brand new Atari) and has outsold pretty much all of them. Now we’ll just wait and see what Mr. Rubik has in store for us next.