December 21, 2023 – Theme Week Day 4

We’re continuing our theme week on Christmas Toy Crazes! Today also happens to be Throwback Thursday, and we’re featuring the year 1980. One of the biggest toys for Christmas that year was the Rubik’s Cube!
The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. It’s widely reported that he built the cube as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects. But he actually created it to solve the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He didn’t realize he’d made a puzzle until he scrambled his new cube and tried to restore it.
He called his invention the Magic Cube, and they were sold in Budapest toy shops in 1977. In 1979, they were shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, where they caught the eye of Ideal Toys. Ideal Toys signed a deal to release the toy worldwide, changing the name to Rubik’s Cube.
When the Rubik’s Cube first went on sale in 1980, sales were modest. But after advertising campaigns on TV and in the newspaper, sales soared. By 1981, the Rubik’s Cube had become a craze. Between 1981 and 1983, an estimated 200 million Rubik’s Cubes were sold worldwide.
The toys were so popular that at one point in 1981, 3 of the top 10 best-selling books in the U.S. were books on solving the Rubik’s Cube. ABC even developed a cartoon called  Rubik. the Amazing Cube, which ran for 13 episodes in 1983.
The first world champion speedcubing event was held in Budapest in 1982. Nineteen people competed in the event, and the winning time to solve the cube was 22.95 seconds. Today, the world record time for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube is 3.13 seconds, held by Max Parker from the US. He also holds the world record for fastest one-handed solve at 6.2 seconds.
As of March 2021, more than 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide. That makes it the world’s best-selling puzzle game and best-selling toy. It was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014. Learn more here.