FunWhat is the best selling toy in the world?

What is the best selling toy in the world?

Whole books could be made about toys, the great quantity of them that exist in the world and the sales they have per year. But there is one, which surely we have all played at some time, which is considered the best-selling toy on the planet. It is the well-known Rubik’s Cube.

Why does your interest hold up? It is something that no one can know, but the truth is that since it was introduced in the market in 1980, it has not stopped selling and it is estimated that it has already sold more than 400 million units worldwide.

Professor Erno Rubik

In 1974, the Hungarian Erno Rubik, professor of architecture, showed his students a type of cube through which he sent different theories. Rubik, saw how the cube was reorganized each time in a different way and that is why he decided to give different colors to each of the squares that made up the cube.

With this, he established a pattern that he memorized to bring the cube back to its original shape each time, establishing a game of logic and calculation that has already hooked hundreds of millions of people around the world.

That same year he patented his creation and three years later it began to be marketed in Hungary. In the 80s it began to reach half the world, breaking all sales forecasts for its creator and the stores that managed it.

At that time, Rubik spoke with businessmen and the media to publicize his work. He managed to sell it thanks to his expertise, although, as he confessed, it took him a month to decipher the formula for the Rubik’s Cube, the world’s best-selling toy.

At present, there are all kinds of entries on the Internet about how to solve the cube, tutorials on YouTube to know how to handle it and it is even in the Modern Museum of New York as a sample.

Rubik himself pointed out in his memoirs, ‘Cubed: The Puzzle you us all’, how addictive the game was, and how he even became obsessed with it: «You don’t think about the technical aspects when you turn the cube (…) do you want to play. You just want to master it. And there it is, an object that has forgotten its past, as one who wakes up and cannot remember his dream.

And it is a fascinating, challenging toy and it is estimated that only 5.8% of the population that has played Rubik’s cube has managed to solve it.

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