Rubik's Cube - 3x3 product reviews

Long ago in a city far far away, I first found one of these in a Toyworld store and thought "What a cool idea! I wonder how it works?" At the time thought, I only had enough cash on me (yes, this dates back before eftpos, kiddies) to afford one new toy, and I chose the Rubik's Link-the-Rings puzzle instead. I don't regret my decision but it has taken over 20 years for me to find out what I missed. This really is a cool toy and a great puzzle.
The unit I got for review didn't come with a booklet so I didn't get a chance to explore some of the puzzles and challenges, but that's OK because today we have the ultimate instruction manual, the internet, which soon presented me with all the possible options I could want to satisfy me for years to come.
After a week of playing with this fairly much non-stop I can decided that it makes a perfect companion for the desktop stressball, simply because after playing with one you will be playing with the other. You decide in what order.
A seriously cool toy and worth the effort and pricetag to buy. It has lasted over 25 years so far and I can see it lasting that long again, if for no other reason than it will take some people that long to unscramble it!

This has ever been a classic. From it's first appearance back in the early 80's it was an astounding, and almost magical, puzzle... right through to it's popularity ressurgence in 2005 when it was a mental oddity to a new generation, it has always been something of a 'cool toy' to those who spend more than a few minutes playing with it.

Whether you simply enjoy the challenge of making pretty and/or meaningful patterns on it's faces, or if you thrill at the raw dare of trying to get the random jumbling undone and back to 6 fully-coloured facets, it will enthrall you in a way you wouldn't believe. If nothing else, it will frsutrate you to the point of throwing it out the nearest 20-storey building window. But it doesn't matter how you react to it, once you have given it a few twists, it will affect you.

Nothing has fundamentally changed, it's the same toy, the same design, and it still falls apart if you hurl it at the floor in rage... and it still clicks back together again and twists and turns in your hands after you have cooled down again.

Overall, still the same great toy/puzzle I remember from my youth, with all the same majesty and magic, even though I have seen it's innards too many times. -guilty grin- Time for me to move on to the next level of frustration and see how that goes...

This is one of those toys that never seems to go out of fashion and even today holds it's fun factor when other toys of my childhood just seemed to fade away into obscurity. This is a toy that you can never really stop fiddling with it as you always want to pick it up and see if you can solve it "this time" however unless you are one of those geniuses that can solve it in no time flat, chances are you won't, but that doesn't stop you from trying .

I give it a good score for age suitability because as soon as it was out of the box my two kids got it and have effectively scrambled it already, so now I got to find one of those how to solve the rubik's cube books now, just so I can get it back to original state as unfortunately the hints book only goes so far (but that doesn't stop me from fiddling with it )

Now although at the time of writing this review there was no price listed, I feel that no matter what the price it's definitely worth it, if only for the nostalgia factor.

And as for the 'Cool Toy' factor - hey it's a Rubik's Cube, it's always gonna be 'Cool'.