The Rubik’s Cube is back–did it ever disappear? It will be released as “Rubik’s 360,” which means it will be round and drive people insane trying to figure it out except for those whiz kids who will YouTube their puzzling triumphs.

Other novelties from the eighties have not stood the test of time like Rubik’s Cube. You can still find the original cube as well as knock-off tributes in game stores. And if you’re like me, you’ve picked one up on an impulse thinking you’ll finally get all sides to match up instead of the lame “one side” you could only do as a kid.  It’ll never happen!

Unless you study and who has time for that. So another Rubik’s Cube ends up in the closet.

The Cube was actually invented in the spring of 1974 by Erno Rubik. He wanted to find a way to keep several tiny cubes together as you turned and twisted them so that the sided colors became mixed up. Then came the fun of trying to match the colors back again. You could also cheat and take the colored stickers off and place them appropriately–though as I think about it that must have been a knock-off cube my Mom bought me. I was always getting the “knock-off” toys as a kid.

Erno applied for his patent in 1975 and it was accepted in 1977. The timing was right because there were two other patents on the table for similar inventions, one of which was approved before Erno, but didn’t function in quite the same way and was rejected by toy companies.

Only Erno Rubik’s Cube would be embraced by the public–and with how weird the Eighties was with novelties, it became an icon.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS