It Seemed Like a Good Idea: Rubik, the Amazing Cube

* By Jeff Sparkman
* 03/13/09 12:54 PM


This week's gem is a cartoon about one of the world's most popular toys--but
this one grows a face and stubby legs.

A cartoon about a magical Rubik's Cube? What could possibly go wrong? Science
fiction author Theodore Sturgeon is credited with the revelation commonly
referred to as Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

Nowhere is this illustrated better than the Saturday morning cartoons I watched
in the late 1970s and '80s. That said, I do have an odd affection for them,
which, I suppose, is why I write things like this.

But I digress.

Imagine that in the 1970s, some animation studio made a cartoon about the Pet
Rock. "Oh, don't be ridiculous," you're probably thinking. "That's just patently
stupid." And yet in 1983, Ruby-Spears Productions unleashed "Rubik, the Amazing
Cube" on an unsuspecting public.

A mysterious horse-drawn carriage rolls down the road, a gas lamp on its rear.
The carriage hits a bump, and a treasure chest falls out, crashing to the ground
below. Inside is a Rubik's Cube with its colors jumbled. A group of kids finds
the cube, and when one of them solves it, the cube levitates, grows a face and
legs. Oh, and it shoots out a tractor beam that carts them along with it as it
flies away from the man driving the carriage.

And that's in just the first few seconds of the theme song, which, by the way,
was performed by Menudo.

Rubik is a magical Rubik's Cube, and pretty much every episode revolves around
him using his various powers until they're actually needed, at which point Rubik
gets all jumbled up, which renders him powerless. Apparently Rubik's technology
is a precursor to the transporters on "Star Trek."

Rubik's kid friends have to solve him in time to fix the episode's problem,
which usually involves Rubik learning something about humanity, like how
important it is not to slouch or that you shouldn't talk to strangers. And when
I say every episode, I mean every episode.

Sure, I'm talking smack about this now, but I have to admit that I did watch it
as a kid. I wouldn't say I liked it, but it was on ABC, the same channel that
played "Super Friends," and I didn't usually change the channel until
"Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" came on NBC.

See, kids, you do pay the price for being lazy.

The funny part is that though the cartoon was essentially a half-hour-long
commercial for the Rubik's Cube, it hit Saturday mornings well after every kid
had a cube of his or her own, whether they wanted one or not. I had long since
solved mine; it's amazing what you can do with a butter knife and a little
determination.

While this ran for a whole season, only 12 episodes were made. The shows were
innocuous enough, even if the premise itself was shamelessly commercial even for
Saturday mornings.

I'm just disappointed there wasn't an episode where Rubik teamed up with the
Magic Snake.