{"id":612,"date":"2014-04-27T06:43:47","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T06:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesixsides.com\/?p=612"},"modified":"2014-04-27T06:43:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T06:43:47","slug":"rubiks-the-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/27\/rubiks-the-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubik’s, the Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rubik’s<\/a><\/em> is a company who holds the rights to the singularly most popular toy icon in history. Given the cube’s new found popularity over the last 10 years, the problem has been presented to them of how to build on top that success. Responses to this problem include the Rubik’s Revolution<\/a>, the Rubik’s Slide<\/a>, the Rubik’s TouchCube<\/a>, the Rubik’s 360<\/a>; and now, most recently the Rubik’s Light<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have had the same reaction to each: ridiculous, silly, laughable. (I’d say the one exception is the Mirror Blocks<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I can imagine or hope that they are trying to solve this problem somehow. 2008 was the year the cube’s popularity exploded, I have this Google Trends lookup<\/a> and a spike in my YouTube video views to support this. By happenstance at the US Nationals 2008<\/a> I briefly talked with a pair of very out of place people who were from Rubik’s<\/em>. Their purpose there was to investigate their product’s popularity and figure out how to bring it more mainstream. The conversation was brief, and as far as I can tell since then they’ve failed.<\/p>\n

When the whole time, all everyone wanted, was a decent 2×2-5×5. Believe it or not Rubik’s<\/em> used to hold that market. Then Eastsheen<\/a> came along. They did some innovation and made a 2×2 that didn’t pop, a 4×4 that was smooth(er), and a 5×5 whose pieces wouldn’t break. V-Cube<\/a> also made a huge impact, cube sizes greater than 5×5 were something that Ern\u00f6 himself once said were impossible. Cubesmith<\/a> came up and made stickers people loved! A few years later every cube that’s in competitions are not Rubik’s<\/em> cubes and the products that Rubik’s<\/em> make, including their classic 3×3, have been turned into a running jokes by the community.<\/p>\n

Rubik’s<\/em> can bring themselves back up, they can be a new force to be rekoned with. In addition to the above I have this to tell them directly: Stop focusing on gimmicky or digital spinoff products. Focus on the niche market you could have. Make a cube that is as fast as any generation of Dayan<\/a> cube. Do what you did with the Mirror Blocks, remix your classic puzzle, (just look at what’s coming out of Meffert’s<\/a> these days). Do one or both of these well and people will start listening, buying, more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rubik’s is a company who holds the rights to the singularly most popular toy icon in history. Given the cube’s new found popularity over the last 10 years, the problem has been presented to them of how to build on top that success. Responses to this problem include the Rubik’s Revolution, the Rubik’s Slide, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speedcubing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesixsides.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}