"It's hard to believe that the blockbuster toy that frustrated our childhood and sold almost a hundred million units between 1980 and 1983 is already practically an antique. But what was behind the product that created the first millionaire entrepreneur from the Communist Bloc?

Birth of the Cube
The father of the Cube, Erno Rubik, was a sculptor, an architect, and a teacher of interior design. Spatial relationship problems were his business and realizing them in three dimensions his specialty. In class, he would often build a physical design to make a point—as he did with the Cube. Rubik's Cube was not originally intended to be a blockbuster, or even a toy. It was the presentation of a solution to a structural design problem of surfaces in three dimensions that could be manipulated in any direction.

Inventor Turns Marketer
Technical creations come along all the time. Making a market for them is the job of the entrepreneur. And without such explicit intentions, Rubik started the process by sharing his puzzle with his students and friends. Their attraction to it indicated opportunity. So, when Rubik met Tibor Laczi, a salesman from an Austrian computer company, Rubik was open to what happened next."