In June 1981 reported that the Rubik's Cube is 'a puzzle that's moving like fast food right now. In March 1981 a championship organised by the was held in, and a Rubik's Cube was depicted on the front cover of that same month. By 1981 Rubik's Cube had become a craze, and it is estimated that in the period from 1980 to 1983 around 200 million Rubik's Cubes were sold worldwide. At the end of 1980 Rubik's Cube won a special award, and won similar awards for best toy in the UK, France, and the US. See also: 1980s Cube craze After the first batches of Rubik's Cubes were released in May 1980, initial sales were modest, but Ideal began a television advertising campaign in the middle of the year which it supplemented with newspaper adverts. Since 2003, The, the Rubik's Cube's international governing body, has organised competitions worldwide and kept the official world records. Many continue to practice it and other twisty puzzles and compete for the fastest times in various categories. Although the Rubik's Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s, it is still widely known and used. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of sides, dimensions, and stickers, not all of them by Rubik. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to have only one colour.
An internal pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. On early cubes, the position of the colours varied from cube to cube.
In currently sold models, white is opposite yellow, blue is opposite green, and orange is opposite red, and the red, white and blue are arranged in that order in a clockwise arrangement.
The current version of the cube has been updated to coloured plastic panels instead, which prevents peeling and fading. On the original classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces was covered by nine stickers, each of one of six solid colours: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder, and won the special award for Best Puzzle that year. Rubik's Cube Other names Magic Cube, Speed Cube, Puzzle Cube Type Inventor Company Rubik's Brand Ltd Country Hungary Availability 1977: as Hungarian Magic Cube, first test batches released in Budapest 1980: as Rubik's Cube, worldwide–present Rubik's Cube is a invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture.