A LONG “TOY STORY”
Almost everybody knows that the Hungarian architect, sculptor and inventor Ernö Rubik is the “father” of the Rubik’s® cube. One in five persons on the planet, at least ones in their life had a Rubik’s® cube (or a fake version) in their hands. Here below, is a very short version of the so complex story of the cube. If you are curious to read a very accurate documentation about how exactly thinks went chronologically, than we suggest you to visit Mr. Juan Roure Espinosa’s website: www.jrourees.wixsite.com/rubik/cronologia which is probably the greatest expert in this field. His website is a great resource to understand this complex yet interesting history of this really magic toy. Ernö Rubik was 29, in 1974, when he invented the cube. He studied sculpture at the Technical University in Budapest and architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design. As a boy, Ernö Rubik loved to draw, paint and sculpt. He describes his room as resembling the inside of a child’s pocket, with crayons, sticks, springs and scraps of paper scattered across every surface. While a professor of design at the academy, he pursued his hobby of building geometric models.
He became obsessed with geometric patterns. He taught a class called “descriptive geometry”, which involved teaching students to use two-dimensional images to represent three-dimensional shapes and problems. It was an odd and esoteric field, but it prepared him to develop the cube. Starting with 27 blocks of wood and rubber bands, Ernö Rubik set out to create a structure which would allow the individual pieces to move without the whole structure falling apart.
He made the original prototype of his cube by hand, cutting the wood, boring the holes and using elastic bands to hold the contraption together. It took a month to solve the problem of the cube. He showed his prototype to his class and his students liked it very much. Ernö Rubik realized that, because of the cube’s simple structure, it could be manufactured relatively easily and might have appeal to a larger audience.
The mystery of the cube consists in its simplicity and yet its complexity. A disruptive innovation and probably the best neuro-cognitive toy. It’s a very simple object, everybody can understand what is the goal at the first time they hold it in their hands. Each method of solving the cube employs its own set of algorithms – most are long and difficult to memorize. After he cracked it, Ernö Rubik submitted an application at the Hungarian Patent Office for a “three-dimensional logical toy.” Ernö Rubik’s father possessed several patents, so he was familiar with the process and applied for a patent for his invention.
“I showed it to the people in the school and my students liked it very much. And I had the feeling that because it has very simple structure, it can be manufactured easily and it can be a product that is available for others. And so I applied for a patent because I had some experience of my father’s work and he has got several patents. After that I was searching to find a manufacturer here in Hungary. But the country was a very different place from how it is today. We were behind the Iron Curtain, we had different social circumstances, so it was not an easy task.” – Ernö Rubik
The process from early prototype to significant mass production of the cube had taken over six years. In 1976, he found a small company called Politechnika (that was renamed later in Politoys) – their main line was manufacturing chess sets and plastic toys – and they started to negotiate. Politechnica manufacturer first 5.000 copies of the cube. So, in 1977, Rubik’s “Buvös Kocka” (his original Hungarian name) or “Magic Cube” debuted in Hungarian toy shops.
Later, a second slightly different version was produced. The weight was 117 grams, the pieces where already hollow, the vinyls cut by machine and with rounded corners. In general, the quality had improved a lot compared to the first batch; the box was is still that of Politechnika and the paper was the same. On Christmas 1977, they received an order from Hungarian wholesalers for five thousand buckets. The cooperative put some 12,000 cubes on the market during the last days of that year. Thanks to the great success of the cube, in 1978 they had ordered up to 45,000 pieces and hoping for greater success, they doubled their production the same year. It was Konsumex – a Hungary’s state trading company – who began marketing it. Two years later, 300.000 cubes had sold in Hungary.
In December 1977 Tibor Szentivanyi, who lived in Budapest wrote to James Dalgety in Pentangle Company, describing a new puzzle: a “Magic Cube“, which consisted of 27 cubes that could be turned without falling, but initially James He did not believe it and it seemed impossible. However, James was very intrigued and when he finally had it in his hands he was astonished, possibly he was the first person from outside Hungary who had a Büvos Kocka (magic cube) as it was called then in his hands, an invention that later was known as Rubik’s® cube.
Pentangle Company soon secured exclusive rights to distribute the magic cube in the UK. Pentangle receives the first cubes and realizes that there are two very similar colors that lead to confusion and decides to change that orange similar to yellow, changing it for the bright orange and more phosphorous that we all know. In 1978 Pentangle was the first company to import magic cubes out of Hungary in commercial quantities. They arrived in the UK in Politechnika‘s typical blue box and were repackaged in transparent drums lifted by a polystyrene block that was surrounded by a conical booklet and an instruction booklet that was initially round on one side and then another. with more extensive instructions, even in some there was nothing, it was not a solution of the cube, but an explanation of how to grind it so as not to break it.
Now we are going to see four Politechnika already with different languages, before the company was renamed Politoys, they were the first boxes for export, they were manufactured in 1978 although the date is not very well known, it would be at the beginning, the only thing that is known is that 2,100 cubes are exported in 1978, some boxes have a cube from the second batch of 117 grams, but in some it comes with a cube from the first batch, so there is a bit of a mix in terms of cubes, there are boxes in English, German , French and of course Hungarian.
At the end of 1978 math professor David Singmaster contacted the commercial attaché at the Hungarian Embassy and his letter apparently went to Politechnika and he passed it on to Trial Company. They told him they had a considerable number of buckets to sell, which were in the original blue “Buvos Kocka” boxes. A short time passed and he decided to import some cubes to sell but overnight the orders were getting bigger and after 8 weeks, they were sold out, it was a surprise, since they thought that with the ones they had they would last several years, and it seemed that they were unable to meet the demands of cubes. David Singmaster was the most enthusiastic promoter of the Rubik’s® cube. His Notes on Rubik’s “Magic Cube” which he began compiling in 1979 provided the first mathematical analysis of the cube as well as providing one of the first published solutions.
David is told that they only have a small number of old cubes that were for a company (a promotion) of products for “COMPUTER CONSULTING MÜNCHEN” that at the time they had not been able to sell them, so for a month or so, it was selling these cubes until the supply ran out. Those cubes are the other “rare” ones that came out in their day since the first ones came with the first cube, with the two oranges that looked alike, in addition to the box there was an error with the name of the company, instead of “consulting” it said “consultung” and David added a leaflet with instructions. These cubes today are the most sought after for their rarity since they come with the first cube and the box is poorly edited and comes with the Singmaster note.
This extraordinary Hungarian “toy story”, however, was about to turn a magic page. In early 1980, Tibor Laczi, a Hungarian-born German businessman and amateur mathematician, took a Magic Cube to the Nuremberg Toy Fair. Laczi had been hugely impressed with the puzzle and had arranged to meet Rubik in Budapest before his Nuremberg trip. “When Rubik first walked into the room”, he said, “I felt like giving him some money. He looked like a beggar. He was terribly dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius on my hands”. Among those, Laczi showed the Magic Cube at Nuremberg was Tom Kremer, a Transylvanian-born inventor – and survivor of the Nazi German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – who persuaded American company Ideal Toys to invest in a million improved Magic Cubes for the world market. Both Laczi’s and Kremer’s instincts were spot-on.
The puzzle was licensed by Ernö Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. Ideal Toy Corp. rebranded “The Magic Cube” to the “Rubik’s Cube” before its introduction to an international audience. Kremer was born in Transylvania (Székelyföld) in1930. He speaks fluently Hungarian so dealing with Ernö Rubik was very easy. As a teenager Kremer was imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, finding freedom again on its liberation in April 1945.
Traveling to Israel he joined the fight for the fledgling country’s independence, gained in 1948. Kremer had been living in England and working in games design since the 1960s when he visited a trade show in Germany and saw the Rubik’s® cube for the first time in 1979. His son David recalled: “The cube wasn’t a big sensation at the Nuremberg toy fair: it was just a small thing in a backwater section at this huge event.” Kremer licensed the design to the Ideal Toy Company. Later he reacquired the license, allowing him to introduce it to new generations of puzzlers.
The first big order and first big business is signed with Ideal Toys (on the verge of bankruptcy) who become also the exclusive distributor of the cube in the USA, England, Germany, France, Canada, Australia and Japan. Ideal Toy places an order for a million cubes to be delivered in 1980, but with a stipulation that shifted most of the risk onto the manufacturer. The actual contract was for 500,000 cubes only, and an option was signed for the other 500,000. This meant that the American firm was obliged to accept the second half of the order only if the first 500,000 had been delivered on time and of course in perfect quality by the Politechnika Cooperative, or else the manufacturer would keep the 500,000 seconds.
The race against time began. In this sense, the entrepreneurship of the small industrial cooperative was quite remarkable not only at the Hungarian level, but also at the international level. A few thousand cubes could be produced under the company’s established technical conditions, in a backyard, but a million cubes required up-to-date industrial equipment, establishing this was not an easy task. In 1980 Politechnika changed its name and from now on it would be called Politoys. In 1980, automatic injection molding machines, modern machines and tools, transport and packaging equipment were acquired from the German Democratic Republic.
In this way, Politoys was able to satisfy the demands of the American customer not only in time and in first-class quality, but already in 1980 it produced 2.74 million cubes for export through Konsumex to Western European countries. and 1.1 million for the national sale. The intensified work had no detrimental effect on quality. The elements of the cube were standardized and interchangeable, the quality was uniform and the packaging was perfect.
In 1980, Ideal Toy brought Ernö Rubik to New York to a toy fair. He wasn’t the most charismatic salesman — a shy architecture professor with a then-limited command of English — but the company needed someone to show that the puzzle was solvable. Sales exploded. The puzzle was originally advertised as having “over three billion combinations but only one solution” In three years, Ideal Toy sold 100 million Rubik’s Cubes.
The Rubik’s® cube would go on to become an instant success worldwide, winning several Toy of the Year awards, and becoming a staple of 1980’s popular culture. To date, over 350 million Rubik’s® cubes have been sold, making it one of the best selling toys of all time. Ernő Rubik become the richest private individual in communist Hungary. At first, Ernö Rubik didn’t have a salary from the toy company, and for a while, he saw little of the royalties. He lived on his professor’s salary of $200 a month. He was unnerved by the attention.
“I’m not the person who loves to be in the spotlight and so on and so forth,” he said. Almost as quickly as the craze started, it sputtered out. Cheaply made counterfeits flooded the market, and demand fizzled. Ernö Rubik became self-employed in 1983, founding the Rubik Stúdió, where he designed furniture and games. In 1987 he became a professor with full tenure and in 1990 he became the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy (Magyar Mérnöki Akadémia). At the Academy, he created The International Rubik Foundation to support especially talented young engineers and industrial designers.
Kremer was a cofounder of Winning Moves Games and later Chairman of the Board, while cofounder Phil Orbanes served as President. It was while serving at Winning Moves that Kremer was able to reacquire the Rubik’s® cube in 2000. Seven Towns created in March 2013 a secondary company in Notting Hill, London – Rubik’s Brand Limited – to handle all Rubik’s® cube licensing and marketing and to take advantage of opportunities beyond the toy and game industry.
Rubik’s Brand Limited and Seven Towns are separate, now. Kremer died on June 2017. Rubik’s Brand Limited is co-owned by Tom Kremer’s son, David Lytton Kremer and Ernö Rubik which is also Honorary Life President. The company was expanding into licensing – turning the cube into a brand rather than just focusing on building toys. But on October 2020 in a statement, Elizabeth LoVecchio, vice president of the Toronto-based company Spin Master announced the acquisition of Rubik’s Brand Ltd, owner of the Rubik’s® cube for US$50M.
Founded by three friends in 1994, Spin Master went public on the TSX and quickly began an aggressive strategy of acquiring other toy brands. Rubik’s Brand Ltd. also holds the registered trademarks for the word “Rubik®” and “Rubik’s“. Ronnen Harary (Co-CEO at Spin Master) also declared that “One of the things that attracted us to Rubik’s was the high brand awareness and the positive resonance that brand has. Everybody has a story about Rubik’s and it engenders such amazing sentiment with people. Will continue the legacy of the Rubik’s Cube“… So we are really confident that the new owners will really understand the the real importance of this brand and will not consider it as a simple “toy”, but they will use their energy and investments to rebuild the positioning of this brand correctly.
Despite several decades passing since the invention of the famous puzzle, the Rubik’s® cube still remains a staple of 80’s culture and is one of the first things that comes to mind when thinking about things from the 80s. The immense popularity of the puzzle has resulted in several appearances throughout the media and the arts, either as a background object or as a key element. Suddenly, the Rubik’s® cube was everywhere, a phenomenon that was at once a toy, a game, a designer object and a source of global fascination.
Since 1980, the Rubik’s® cube has been featured in films from “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Being John Malkovich” to “The Machinist” and “WALL-E“. It has also become a way of describing other designed objects, including modern buildings, that have something not so much of the look as of the interlocking complexity of the Rubik’s® cube. The Rubik’s® cube is an object we collectively love and there are, perhaps inevitably, collectors of early models, each dreaming of finding and owning a pre-1980 Magic Cube made in communist Hungary.
Talking about very rare Rubik’s® cubes, in 2020 a certain Istvàn Dupai from Politoys company answered online to a question concerning a limited edition of Rubik’s cubes available in 1980. The cubes were painted instead of using stickers but the orange paint dissolved the black cube and turned purple. “ Yes, we have produced those those purple Rubik’s cubes that you are looking for. They were made around 1980. We tried to print the colors instead of using stickers but the orange paint dissolved the black cube and turned purple. We only made a few of these. We used completely square stickers around 1978. An interesting fact: the first cubes were twice as heavy as the later ones.” – Istvàn Dupai (Politoys). Probably this cubes are really very rare and expensive nowadays.
Because it fits so neatly into the human hand, and because it can be solved in so many ways – this innocuous, but brightly coloured, plastic cube has become as timeless in its own way as age-old board games like chess, backgammon and Go. Unlike these games, though, a Rubik’s® cube is designed to be played solo. Even still, players have found ways of making the solving of the puzzle a team event. Although precise figures are unobtainable, it seems that more than 400m Rubik’s® cubes have been sold to date, making it one of the most popular puzzles of all time. The Rubik’s® cube passes the “test of time,” and now can be seen even at the permanent collection of the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York.
In March 1981, the cube landed on the cover of Scientific American, where Pulitzer-Prize winning scientist Douglas Hofstadter, author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” (1979), called it “one of the most amazing things ever invented for teaching mathematical ideas.” The cube struck Hofstadter as “paradoxical,” he said in a phone interview, since it can be used as a tool to teach group theory, or the symmetries of objects. “Any twist of any face (clockwise 90 degrees, counterclockwise 90 degrees, or 180 degrees) is a group element, and so are arbitrary sequences of such twists,” he later explained.
Reports of the cube’s death were premature. In the 1990’s, a new generation of enthusiasts discovered it. New speed-cubing records were set, as were records for solving the cube underwater, while skydiving, while blindfolded, while juggling. The World Cube Association (WCA) now hosts more than 1,000 speed-cubing competitions each year. Independent toy analyst Chris Byrne says toys like Rubik’s® cube are enjoying a resurgence in popularity because of the pandemic that has kept hundreds of millions of people around the world at home, and has parents scrambling to find entertainment options that aren’t electronic screens.
“The elegant solution, the quality of the solution, is much more important than timing. If you find a solution with the cube, it doesn’t mean you find everything. It’s only a starting point. You can work on and find something else, you can improve your solution, you can make it shorter, you can go deeper and deeper and collect knowledge and many other things”.- Rubik Ernö
While Ernö Rubik became famous for inventing the Rubik’s® cube and his other puzzles, much of his recent work involves the promotion of science in education. Rubik is involved with several organization such as Beyond Rubik’s Cube, the Rubik Learning Initiative and the Judit Polgar Foundation all of whose aim is to engage students in science, mathematics, and problem solving at a young age. Ernö Rubik himself wouldn’t make the cut. He can solve the cube in about a minute — an improvement from that first, agonizing process — but he’s not interested in speed. He still reflects on its possibilities — not an improvement to its design, but on its potential applications. He speaks about the cube as if it’s his child. “I’m very close to the cube. The cube was growing up next to me and right now, it’s middle-aged, so I know a lot about it,” he said. Here below, you can watch a beautiful interview with Ernö Rubik filmed by Tom Fekete for UNDARK magazine: